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“WAYSIDE ’’ 


THE WAKING DREAM OF A SOUL 
BEFORE AN OPEN WOOD FIRE 


BY 

EDWARD ALLEN UiJtf 



BOSTON 

SHERMAN, FRENCH & COMPANY 
1914 




Copyright, 1914 
Sherman, French Company 

NOV -6 1914 


©CI.a:J88266 


TO 

THE “ONLY GTRL“— A MEMORY 









INTRODUCTION 


An old colonial mansion upon an eminence, sur- 
rounded by a forest of giant oaks, towering elms, 
and graceful hickories. A long, broad, spacious 
room in that mansion, fronting the east and south. 
A huge old-fashioned fireplace in which blazes and 
flashes a fire of seasoned logs. An easy chair 
before the fire in which is seated a man with hair 
like the driven snow. An open Bible is upon his 
knee, in which he has been reading the story of 
Sinai. The old man stops reading to rest his 
eyes, and the white head lies back against the 
cushioned chair, and with closed eyes his thoughts 
are busy with the story which he has read. 

Suddenly he is climbing a mountain slope alone. 
Up and up he goes steadily, to find upon that 
mountain top he knows not what, but still some- 
thing draws him on. At last the summit is 
reached and he stands alone with uncovered head 
in the presence of his conscience and his God. 
He looks around him and beholds no Being, but 
he feels a Presence there, and some inner sense tells 
him he is upon holy ground. 

Before him is a bush gleaming red like fire, with 
the beautiful carmine of the autumn days, and 
1 


2 


INTRODUCTION 


around him are other plants and bushes and trees, 
glorious in their coloring of crimson and purple 
and gold. He listens, but no voice comes to him 
audibly; only from somewhere, everywhere, there 
comes to his senses, now curiously alert, a mes- 
sage which needs no spoken words to carry it. 
He lifts his eyes in worship of the Presence which 
fills the place, and to his soul comes this message, 
clear and plain and unmistakable. 

“ O Soul, be still and learn, for you are now in 
the presence of your Creator, the Power which 
made and governs all things. I am the Spirit of 
the ages gone, and of the eternity which is to 
come. I am Creator, and Ruler, and the Moving 
Force of the universe. I am the Mental Force 
which holds the worlds in the hollow of its hand. 
I am the Everlasting Arms, and the hope of every 
human soul. I am the divine Mental Conscious- 
ness of time and eternity, a part of which you 
are; and in me, and through me, and because of 
me, you live and move and have your being. 
Your spirit is a part of me; I am the Father 
and you are my child, created of me and destined 
to grow into my image, an individual personality 
which is a part of the Great Personality of the 
universe. 

“ Behold, I give you the commandments of life ; 
and if you understand them and obey them, life 
and peace will be yours for everlasting. Through 
me you will reach an eternity of existence in peace 
and happiness, even as I am. These are the com- 


INTRODUCTION 3 

mandments which I give unto you, and I demand 
obedience to them continuously. 

“ Think rightly. This is the first and greatest 
commandment; for upon this depends all others. 
Guide your thoughts in ways of love and purity, 
and into harmony with the All-Good. 

'*Live rightly. This is the second great com- 
mandment, for upon the keeping of this command 
rests your destiny and your chances for eternal 
life. 

“ These two commandments are the sum and 
substance of immortal happiness, and upon their 
strict observance depends life everlasting. Em- 
bodied in these two great commands are many 
others, each necessary to be obeyed of itself, but 
each a part of these two great commandments. 

“ Thou shalt work, for in labor, both physical 
and mental, lies the secret of growth and develop- 
ment. 

“ Thou shalt be earnest, for only in earnest and 
honest effort and striving can progress be made 
in the physical life. 

“ Thou shalt be brave, for where fear enters, 
there happiness cannot dwell. 

“ Thou shalt be loving, for love is the pathway 
to eternal life, and there is no other. 

“ Thou shalt be clean, for no unclean thing shall 
enter the Kingdom of God. 

“ Thou shalt be well, for in health only is hap- 
piness, and happiness is the gateway through 
which all who reach eternal life must enter. 


4 


INTRODUCTION 


“ Thou shalt worship no other God but Good, 
for only in good and happiness and purity and 
health lies the way to salvation of human souls. 

“ Behold, by the operation of my beneficent 
laws I have given you a physical body for your 
use and habitation, while gaining the physical life 
experience necessary to the making of a soul. 
Take good care, then, of this beautiful habitation, 
the gift of thy Creator. Preserve it, and watch 
over it. Study the laws which govern it and obey 
them, for no clean soul inhabits an unclean body, 
and no saved soul dwells in a physical body defiled 
or self-abused. 

“ Behold, I have placed all things necessary to 
thy salvation within thy own reach, and all my 
laws are within thy comprehension, which are nec- 
essary for eternal life. If thou wilt search them 
out and obey them, the reward of immortal hap- 
piness shall be thine.” 

The vision fades, and the old man raises his 
head. The Bible has fallen to the floor, and he 
places it again upon the table. Then, rising, he 
lifts his face and his heart toward the invisible 
Presence which he feels was just now with him, 
and makes again a firm resolve to so live, — fear- 
lessly, happily, honestly, cleanly, and worthily, 
— that he shall at last stand eternally in that 
kingdom where the Spirit of Good forever dwells. 

Somewhere in the great world to-day there lives 
some one in whose mentality I will be able to strike 


INTRODUCTION 


6 


with this story an answering harmonious chord, 
and that person will read and understand and en- 
joy this tale which I am about to relate. My 
hope is that there may be many such readers, but 
that there will be at least one I am positive and 
sure. I think that one who will appreciate most 
fully will be a girl, and I picture her as a dainty 
little lady with deep wide brown eyes, and luxuri- 
ant brown hair, bearing in certain lights a hint 
of gold, as if the sunshine had kissed it in bene- 
diction. I picture my one best reader thus be- 
cause my soul holds in its inmost depths the image 
of just such a girl, beautiful, sympathetic, 
friendly, who was my wife for twenty happy years. 
She would have read this book, I know, and would 
have called it good. So, aided by the memory of 
the girl that really was, and cheered by the image 
of the girl that somewhere is, I will endeavor to 
tell the story of this soul which is still young be- 
cause it will be ages in the making, for it will en- 
dure and grow ceaselessly in the eternity which 
lies before it. 

I picture this one best beloved reader as young, 
just entering into womanhood, and married to 
the man whom she adores. Yesterday was the 
first anniversary of their marriage, and the manly 
boy-husband fortunately remembers just as he 
leaves the office where he works, that this day is 
their wedding anniversary, and he resolves to take 
her a little gift to show that he has not forgotten 
that which has been the uppermost thought in her 


INTRODUCTION 


mind all day, and knowing that she values best of 
all gifts a book, he enters a book store to make 
a selection. 

“ I want a little gift book for a lady,” he tells 
the girl behind the counter, and she, in quick ap- 
preciation, places before him book after book, 
with covers done in beautiful design and leaves 
filled with ^sentimental selections, and embellished 
with many pictures. The wealth of assortment 
confuses him, and he hesitates about making a 
choice. At last the girl drags out of an obscure 
corner, where it has been almost smothered be- 
neath volumes of more pretentions, this little mod- 
est book. 

“ Maybe she would like this,” she says ; and as 
something in the title or the text strikes his fancy, 
he suddenly decides to take it, and he bears it 
home and places it beside her plate at the dinner 
table. 

That was yesterday, and to-day she is reading 
the little book with shining eyes because of 
thoughts of the giver. It is a fair October day 
with just a touch of autumn keenness in the air, 
and a blazing wood fire is burning in the generous 
grate to take the “ chill ” off the room. I see her 
draw a long cushioned seat before the fire, and 
with the great south window at her back, settle 
down to read. In imagination I sit down beside 
her and watch the fascinating changes upon her 
face as she reads. Here a smile curves the cor- 
ners of her mouth, and the enticing dimples show 


INTRODUCTION 


7 


for a moment in her cheeks. Now a sober light 
comes into her eyes, and the dimples fade away. 
Anon her sweet lips quiver, and, as I live, tears, 
great tears, fill her beautiful eyes and slowly roll 
down upon her cheeks. Quickly she dashes them 
away, and glances apprehensively in my direction, 
as though she sensed a presence which her phys- 
ical vision could not see. Reassured by the seem- 
ing absence of observers, she smiles again, a faint 
phantom of a smile, and continues her reading. 
So the hours pass quickly and unwearingly, and 
the light is beginning to grow dim, when the door 
suddenly opens and her handsome boy-husband en- 
ters the room and sits down beside her, exactly 
in the place where I am sitting. But he does not 
see me either, and totally oblivious of my pres- 
ence, he puts his arm around her and she lays 
aside the book and rests her head upon his shoul- 
der. What happens then causes my heart to 
wince and my pulse to quicken, as I remember 
when I, too, held a wife like that in my loving 
arms, and felt the glory of a love returned. 

“ Do you like the book, Evelyn ” he said. 

“ Oh, yes, Scott ; I like it very much. It is 
beautiful.” 

Witness now, you mollusk, who threw down this 
same book in disgust a moment ago, finding noth- 
ing in it. This dainty little lady, whose discern- 
ment is worth a dozen such as yours, likes it very 
much and calls it “ beautiful.” Now, what do I 
care if the ninety and nine will have none of it, so 


8 


INTRODUCTION 


long as this dear one-hundredth reader “ likes it 
very much.” Thus you multitude of unapprecia- 
tive and undiscriminating common souls may cast 
the book aside or ignore it, if it suits you, for here 
is my reward in the pleasure of this delightful 
mental entity, this dear little lady Evelyn, for 
whom I write and in whom I can confide. 

To you, then, my Beloved, the creation of my 
imagination, but the image of the girl who was 
and the dream of the girl who now is somewhere, 
as I verily believe, I will address myself, and let 
the rest of the world find such precarious enjoy- 
ment as they may in other things. 

First of all, then, Evelyn, I will tell you some- 
thing of this soul with whom you are to sympa- 
thize and with whom you are to smile, I hope, 
and be glad, and with whom and for whom the 
tears, perhaps, may come into your beautiful eyes 
sometimes as you read this life story in the little 
book which you nevertheless “ like very much.” 
My name is John McLain, though you may call 
me “ Jack ” if you like, for so some who love me 
do, and I am living to-day, as I write, in the house 
where I was born some sixty years ago. The 
house was built of solid masonry and great tim- 
bers of living oak, in the days when timber was 
abundant and lumber was cheap, and the great 
oak beams of its mighty frame have grown, in 
these passing years, as hard as iron, and the old 
house stands as solid to-day, to all appearance, 
as the day when my father finished it the year be- 


INTRODUCTION 


9 


fore I was born. My father’s farm consisted of 
three hundred and twenty acres, forty acres of 
which, surrounding and adjoining the house, was, 
and still is, heavily timbered. The house stands 
back from the highway some three hundred feet, 
upon a ridge sloping down to the road in front, 
and back to a beautiful little lake covering about 
one hundred acres, which forms a part of the farm 
boundary upon the north. The house was a man- 
sion in the days when it was built, standing two 
full stories and a generous half in height, and is 
flanked by broad verandas to the east and west. 
The highway, along which a trolley line runs in 
these later days, leads from the great city twenty 
miles to the north, into and past a little village 
one mile to the south, and so on indefinitely, 
through the country to other towns beyond. 
Upon one of the great posts which mark the gate- 
way of the entrance drive in front is a name plate 
bearing the one word “ Wayside,” which is the 
name my young wife christened the place when she 
first came here to live. Here I was born, and here 
I lived until, tiring of the unbending rule of my 
father, I left home one summer night when I was 
but a boy of eighteen, and here my father lived 
and died, being to the last a firm, unyielding Pur- 
itan, with an unswerving faith in a literal burning 
lake of fire and brimstone, and the existence of a 
terrible and Calvinistic God of wrath. Here my 
gentle, sweet-faced mother lived her patient, un- 
complaining life of self-denial and usefulness, rais- 


10 


INTRODUCTION 


ing her family of three sons and one daughter, to 
see them drift away from the old home one after 
another, — the sons to settle in other states, the 
daughter to elope with an actor who took her to 
England. Here I came back just before the death 
of my father to take up my life and to occupy 
again the room which I had left so suddenly long 
years before, and here I had brought my beautiful 
young wife one year after my father’s death, and 
here my mother received her into a loving compan- 
ionship which was not marred by unkind word 
or unpleasant look so long as my mother lived, 
and here my mother passed away the next year 
after my marriage. Here my darling baby 
daughter was born, and here, five years later, her 
soul passed into the Great Silence, to be followed 
a few years later by her mother, my perfect wife, 
leaving me desolate and undone. 

Here there come to me often old friends and 
true, chief among them being two who were school 
comrades and playmates of my boyhood days — 
Robert Manning, who became a Presbyterian min- 
ister in the city, and who during the first years of 
his ministry preached the funeral sermons of my 
father and my mother, and later read the beauti- 
ful service of the church over the cold and silent 
bodies of my child and the dear wife whom I so 
loved; the other is Charles Scott, a physician in 
the city, who has been my family doctor through 
all the years of his practice. He was at the bed- 
side of my parents in their last illness ; he it was 


INTRODUCTION 


11 


who did all that mortal man could do to save the 
life of my fever-smitten child ; and it was he who 
met me at the door on that dread day when my 
wife’s drowned body lay stark and silent in the 
darkened room of my suddenly empty house. 
Later it was his hand which took mine in friendly 
clasp, and as I looked with dry and aching eyes 
into his, which were full of tears of sympathy, he 
laid his kind hand upon my shoulder and bade me 
give sorrow voice, for fear the o’erwrought heart 
might break, or reason totter upon her throne. I 
walked the floor that night, in my despair and des- 
olation feeling nothing, . caring nothing, save my 
great sorrow; and in the morning this same kind 
friend took me to her room, the room in which she 
and the babe had slept, during its short life, and 
in which it had died. It was a room held sacred 
to the memory of that dear young soul, and draw- 
ing the curtains aside, he let in the glorious 
sun of that summer day, and around me were 
the child’s toys and playthings. There were 
pictures of the child and her mother upon 
the walls, and lying across the foot of the bed 
were the clothes which she had worn upon 
that last day in life, and the hat which she had 
swung by its ribbon in her hand when she went 
down the path with me that last morning to the 
car, and had kissed me good-bye and Godspeed 
as the car came in sight around the turn in the 
road. Suddenly I knelt down upon the floor by 
the bed with my arms across the dress which she 


INTRODUCTION 


had worn, and the fountains of my great grief 
were opened up and the hot tears fell from my 
eyes like rain. My friend wisely left me so, and 
in that room with its sacred memories I fought 
my bitter fight, and kind nature won at last, and 
I slept the sleep of utter exhaustion, lying prone 
across the bed where she had slept with the child, 
— years ago or yesterday, I had forgotten which. 

Now my wife has been gone ten years, and 
again the old house resounds to the laughter and 
music of young voices, for I had remodeled the 
house after my mother’s death, putting in water 
and heating systems, and finishing off the upper 
story into a ballroom where our friends often 
gathered to make merry. Sometimes now, when 
a party of my young friends wish to have a quiet 
dancing party, I let them come here, for I know 
that she would wish it so, and I have arrived at a 
view of life which has brought me consolation and 
a happiness which I did not at one time consider 
possible. These young friends of mine have 
taught me that life is still good to live, and while 
I never will quite see the old happiness back again, 
still I am finding a new happiness and enjoyment 
which has again grown very dear to me. 

The same broad fireplace is at one end of the 
great living-room, and here my friends, young and 
old, sit with me in the days or evenings when a 
“ fire feels good,” and upon the wide western ve- 
randa when the weather is warm enough to make 
that more pleasant. I am head accountant in a 


INTRODUCTION 


13 


great manufacturing plant in the city, as I have 
been for many years, and go daily to my work by 
the cars which pass the door. My two brothers 
still live in a western city, both of them married' 
and prosperous, and the old homestead now be- 
longs to me alone. 

This all by way of introduction. Little Lady 
of my waking dream, so now you know who it is 
that talks to you. 


CHAPTER I 


It is October and the evening air is cold enough 
to make a little fire a very pleasant thing. I 
have brought Robert Manning and Charles Scott 
home with me to dinner, and the meal being over, 
we have adjourned to the living room, where a fire 
of logs is throwing out a grateful heat into the 
room. We had settled down for a reminiscent 
talk, when Charles arose and walked to a picture 
of my wife which hung upon the wall. 

“ John,” said he (we are John and Charles and 
Robert to each other. Little Lady, and so we may 
be to you, if you do not mind), “ that is a good 
picture of your wife.” 

“ Yes,” I said, ‘‘ that is just as she looked the 
first time I ever saw her. It was a cool breezy 
day in the early fall, and she was wearing those 
light furs. She had the picture taken in them 
that same week.” 

“ Well,” said he, “ I saw a girl to-day who' 
looked so like her that I was startled. By the 
wav, did you know that Mrs. Wilson had re- 
turned.? ” 

“ Yes,” I said, “ and they did not find the body' 
of her daughter who was lost on the yachting 
cruise somewhere in the South Seas. They do 
not know exactly where the yacht went down, and 
15 


16 “ WAYSIDE ” 

a great deal of time and money has been spent 
by the friends of those on board to try and re- 
cover the bodies.” 

“ It is too bad,” said Robert, “ for it would be 
such a satisfaction to give the bodies a Christian 
burial.” 

“ Yes,” I said, “ but in my own case I do not 
attach much importance to where my body finds 
its last resting place ; and as far as I am person- 
ally concerned, if I should be lost at sea, or in any 
other place where my body would be difficult to 
recover, I would not want my friends to go to a 
moment’s trouble or to any expense to try and 
recover it. When I leave this body I am through 
with it, and there is no possibility of my ever 
wanting it again. It has served its purpose for 
me, has furnished me a habitation for this life ex- 
perience, in which to make growth and develop- 
ment, and having done this, I can have no further 
use for it. Of course, if my friends, wishing to 
show proper respect to the casket which my soul 
has used and found good, wish to give it a decent 
and careful burial, I believe this to be right and 
proper where possible, but these extraordinary 
efforts to recover bodies under such circumstances 
as these we were speaking of do not meet with my 
very cordial endorsement.” 

“ I hear,” said Robert, “ that Mrs. Wilson 
stopped a month in England on her way back.” 

“ Yes,” I said; “ it seems that a relative of Mr. 
Wilson’s had recently died there, a widower, leav- 


“ WAYSIDE ” 


17 


ing an only child, a daughter about twenty-four 
years old, who was supporting herself as gov- 
erness in an English family. Mrs. Wilson found 
her by accident, took a fancy to her, and after 
much difficulty succeeded in persuading her to 
come home with her, begging her to take the place 
of this daughter who was drowned. I saw Mrs. 
Wilson yesterday, and she said they would be out 
to-night to see me. She mentioned the girl, but 
there is something about her which she did not tell 
me, only saying that I would be surprised when 
I saw her. I suppose she is birthmarked in some 
way, or possibly a cripple.” 

Just at this moment came the sound of a motor 
car stopping outside, and in a moment Edward 
Wilson, an associate of mine in the manufacturing 
company, stood in the doorway, and beside him 
was his wife and a girl who, as she stepped for- 
ward into the light and spoke in answer to her 
aunt’s introduction, sent the quick blood from 
my face and made me stand for a moment, still 
and speechless. 

“ How do you do, Mr. McLain.? ” said the girl, 
holding out her hand. “ I am glad to meet you, 
for I have heard much about you.” 

I heard as in a dream, for there before me stood 
my wife, my dear, young, beautiful wife, just as 
she had stood upon that day long years ago 
when she had been introduced to me on the deck 
of a Mississippi River steamboat, and she was 
dressed now as she was then, — the same furs, the 


18 


“ WAYSIDE ” 


same becoming hat, the same dress, and not only 
that, but it was my wife’s voice which spoke to 
me, and the same words she uttered. For the 
instant I stood in amazement ; then, “ My dear, 
my dear,” I said, taking hold of her hand, “ come 
here and see this picture,” and I led her before 
the picture of my wife. “ Have I dreamed all 
these years, or am I dreaming now.? ” 

“ No,” she said, “ you are not dreaming. I am 
just Kate Wilson, but my aunt has told me how 
much I resemble your wife. Is that why you 
wanted me to dress in this way. Aunt Rachel.? ” 

“ Yes,” said Mrs. Wilson, “ I wanted the pic- 
ture to be complete. I told you, John, that you 
would be surprised.” 

“ I am not so surprised at the physical like- 
ness,” I said, “ although that is remarkable 
enough, but that the voice should be so like my 
wife’s. I would have recognized it instantly, even 
though I had not seen the speaker.” 

“ It is a well known fact,” said Charles, “ that 
certain voices have for certain persons a peculiar 
fascination. They strike some chord in their 
consciousness which vibrates in harmony, and I 
have sometimes wondered if the tones did not 
awaken a sleeping memory in the subconscious 
mentality of something beyond and before the 
present physical life.” 

“ It has always been so with me,” I said. “ Did 
I ever tell you the story of how I first met and 
was attracted to my wife.? It was during the 


“ WAYSIDE ” 


19 


last years of my residence in the West and I was 
taking a trip from Saint Louis to Saint Paul on a 
Mississippi River steamboat of the Diamond Jo 
Line. The evening after leaving Saint Louis I 
was standing at the stern of the boat, watching 
the sun disappear in glory behind the gold and 
crimson of the western clouds. The whole sky 
was flecked with clouds, through which, and upon 
which the low-lying sun was sending its brilliant 
rays, making a picture grand and imposing be- 
yond my power to describe. Suddenly a voice 
spoke close to me. ‘Are they not beautiful.?’ it 
said ; and turning quickly I looked straight into 
the loveliest deep-brown eyes which I had ever 
seen. 

“ ‘ The most beautiful in the world,’ I said, and 
with a blush the owner of the eyes stepped a little 
closer to the captain, to whom she had spoken, 
and not to me. As the captain and I were friends, 
he at once introduced us, and off*ering me her 
hand, the girl said, just as you said now, my dear, 

“ ‘ I am glad to meet you, for I have heard 
much about you.’ 

“ The tones of her voice thrilled me as by an 
electric shock, and seemed to arouse in my con- 
sciousness a faint, dim sense of remembrance, as 
though the tones were familiar to me, and yet I 
someway knew that I had not heard the voice be- 
fore in this life. I was fascinated by the mellow, 
silvery music of it as much as by the beauty of the 
girl who owned it. It is needless to say that I 


20 


WAYSIDE ’’ 


made the most of my opportunities, and it devel- 
oped in our conversation that the girl’s home was 
just across the lake here from my own home, that 
she knew my mother and had heard much about 
me before coming to Saint Louis on a visit to 
friends. Her parents had bought the farm on the 
opposite side of the lake and moved there after I 
had left home. 

“ That night when I went to my stateroom I 
tried my best to remember where I had heard that 
voice before, but in vain ; and finally I fell asleep 
and dreamed a dream, so real and so wild, but still 
so loving and so tender, that its vivid recollection 
cast its influence over me for many days. 

“ I stood in the forest glades of old, in that 
dim day when might made right and force made 
law, and by my side stood a girl who to my savage 
eyes seemed beautiful. Straight I stood, and 
lithe and muscular, and in my hand I held a heavy, 
knotted war club. The girl spoke, and my whole 
being answered to that voice. It was the note to 
which my soul was tuned. Clear as the tone of a 
flute, mellow as the voice of a trombone, sweet as 
the sound of the violin, it fell upon my ear with 
the silvery clearness of a bird’s trill. 

“ ‘ No,’ she said, ‘ I will not go with you, but if 
you love me as you say you do come with me to 
the chief, my father, and demand me of him as a 
man should.’ 

“ ‘ I will go,’ I said, ‘ at once.’ 

“ Together we walked through the forest to the 


“ WAYSIDE ” 


21 


rude village, and standing before the chief I de- 
manded his daughter for a wife. 

‘ Will you fight for her? ’ he said. 

“ ‘ Aye, that I will,’ I answered, ‘ as I would 
fight for life or air were these denied me. Bring 
on my adversary; I am ready.’ 

‘‘ ‘ There are three of my strongest warriors 
who ask for my daughter’s hand. These you 
must fight, and I will give my daughter to the 
victor.’ 

“ Oh, the joy of that combat! The first I laid 
low quickly and easily. The second succumbed 
at last to my furious fighting, and finally the last 
and strongest stood before me. 

“ ‘ Will you rest,’ the old chief asked, ‘ before 
this last trial ? ’ 

“ ‘ Rest ! ’ I said, ‘ I will never rest until I win 
the girl.’ 

“ And so we fought, this last strong warrior 
and I, until at last, there in that forest old, I felt 
my strength giving way, my eyes growing dim, 
and I was nearly conquered when the girl spoke 
to me. 

“ ‘ Kill him, brave heart,’ she said. ‘ He must 
not win.’ 

“ At the sound of that magical voice my 
strength returned, the light came back to my fad- 
ing eyes, and I attacked him with a fury which he 
could not withstand, and he fell before me. 
Proudly the girl and I left the village together — 
and a change came over the nature of my dream. 


22 “ WAYSIDE ” 

I stood in a little hut, and upon the floor was 
stretched the lifeless body of the girl, cold in 
death. Steadily and long I gazed upon her, and 
then, raising my clenched hands to Heaven with a 
cry of anguish upon my lips, I awoke, — to hear 
the trampling of many feet, the clanking of 
chains, and loud shouts of command. Quickly I 
dressed and went out upon the deck, to find the 
steamboat lying at the wharf of a little city where 
the company’s warehouses were on fire, and the 
boat’s crew were helping to extinguish it. The 
fire was under control when I reached the deck, 
and as the morning light was just beginning to 
streak the east, I did not return to my stateroom, 
but sat down in a chair upon the deck, and with 
my mind still full of my curious dream, wondered 
what this girl had to do with that savage vision 
of the long ago. For some days I had been read- 
ing an Oriental book on the transmigration of 
souls, and as the idea was new to me I was much 
interested in it. This, with the strong impres- 
sion which the girl and her beautiful voice had 
made upon me, lingered, I suppose, in my con- 
sciousness after my waking mind had, partly at 
least, resigned control, and so came this impos- 
sible dream, born of that weird, fantastic philos- 
ophy, and the magic of the girl’s voice. 

“ We were a week together upon that trip, a 
happy, glorious week, and at parting the girl 
said, 

‘‘ ‘ You should come back home to live, for your 


‘‘ WAYSIDE ” 


23 


father is failing fast, and both he and your mother 
need you there.’ 

“ ‘ I will,’ I said ; and in a short time I had 
made arrangements to leave the West and come 
back home to stay, allured, I must admit, as much 
by the charming personality of the girl and the 
music of her beautiful voice as by duty to my 
parents. And so I came here in the following 
December to my childhood’s home, arriving on 
Christmas morning, and that same evening I made 
a call at the white house across the lake to see the 
girl who was then, and always has been since that 
time, the ‘ Only Girl ’ to me.” 

“ My Aunt Rachel tells me that you are a singer 
and musician,” said Kate, “ and this will be an 
additional bond of interest between us, for I dearly 
love music.” 

“ My wife was a fine musician,” I said, “ and 
she possessed one of the sweetest soprano voices 
I ever heard, and we derived a great deal of pleas- 
ure from our music.” 

“ Kate is also a singer,” said Mrs. Wilson, 
“ and when I found her she was devoting all her 
spare time to music, in the hope to one day make 
a living by means of it. Now, will you two not 
play and sing something together.^ We would 
vei\v much like to hear you.” 

Kate seated herself at the piano, and I took up 
my violin, and I soon found that she was indeed 
a good musician. As I looked at her, she seemed 
so like my wife that I could scarcely realize that 




“ WAYSIDE ” 


I was not back again in those happy days when 
the “ Only Girl ” and I played and sang together, 
and all the world was joy. 

Rapt in the music and the allurement of the 
time, I finally swung into the melody of an old- 
time love song which was a favorite with my wife, 
and which she and I had sung together on that 
last evening of her life, and soon I was singing 
softly the words of the song, and then Kate joined 
me with her clear, sweet voice, so like my wife’s, 
making the enchantment complete. When the 
song was ended and the last lingering note died 
away, I noticed that Mrs. Wilson was crying 
softly, and even Robert’s eyes were moist, for he 
was ever a kindly and sympathetic gentleman. 

“ That was beautiful,” said Charles ; “ and 
what a gift of the gods music is. I think there 
is more good in that music of yours than in most 
of the sermons which will be preached in the 
churches to-morrow.” 

As the Wilsons were leaving, I said to them, 

“ I wish that you would come and see me more 
often. I am very much alone, and would enjoy 
it greatly.” 

“ We will,” said Mr. Wilson, “ and to tell the 
truth, we would have called here more in the past,* 
but we have both been strict Presbyterians for 
many years, and we knew your peculiar religious 
views and your likelihood to speak them at any 
time, so did not want our faith disturbed nor 
doubts awakened by your unorthodox remarks.” 


“ WAYSIDE ” 


as 


“ Well, I will promise to be good if you will 
bring Miss Kate along, and we will have music in- 
stead of discussion.” 

After they were gone, Charles said, 

“ Now there is a wonderful thing. Here are 
two members of the Presbyterian Church who 
have grown grey in its service, and have wor- 
shipped, we should suppose, intelligently for many 
years, and yet they are afraid that a few mo- 
ments’ conversation with John here may unsettle 
their faith and make them doubt. What sort of 
a tender belief is this which cannot stand criticism 
nor discussion for a moment.? If my faith could 
not stand against all argument or discussion or 
contention, I would change it at once for one 
which could.” 

“ As far as I am personally concerned,” I said, 
“ I have no criticism to make of any man’s re- 
ligious belief if it enables him to live a better life, 
and I seek no controversy over his creed. There 
is no virtue in belief aside from inducing us to 
live more nearly in harmony with the good laws 
of life. Any belief is good which helps us to live 
cleanly, happily and growingly, and any belief 
which does not so help us is a vain and worthless 
thing. 

“ And I believe fully and implicitly in the value 
and necessity of existence of the orthodox church 
and its organization, and the maintenance of re- 
ligious societies. I am ready to give them any 
help which may be in my power, and gladly con- 


26 


‘‘ WAYSIDE ” 


tribute to their support from my substance while 
I lend them my presence and approval, for the 
aim and design of the church is to make the world 
better, and anything which has that end in view 
has my hearty accord. Religion and worship in 
its many phases have been civilizing and uplifting 
agents through the ages, and their influence the 
world could not do without. The ways and meth- 
ods of religious bodies have not always been per- 
fect or even commendable, but the end sought 
has been the betterment of mankind, and of this 
all honest men must approve. Personally, I could 
wish that the church would not consider it neces- 
sary to cling so closely to ancient superstitions 
and outgrown fable, but with its evident and man- 
ifest intent for good I am most fully in sympa- 
thy. 

“ I am ready to acknowledge the Bible’s won- 
derful power for good in the world, and grant its 
efficacy to those of simple faith, and to all those 
who study it honestly and earnestly ; yet I believe 
that eternal salvation does not rest upon a simple 
credence of authority, but upon personal knowl- 
edge and personal mental strength. Every man’s 
salvation is a matter of his own mental develop- 
ment and evolution from the simple and credulous 
faith to the confident and self-evident knowledge 
of a personal understanding. 

“ I believe that the man who worships an idol 
of clay or wood has started along the path which 
leads at last to salvation and eternal life. It is 


‘‘ WAYSIDE ” 


^7 


evidence of the cosmic urge to better things, and 
of the influence of the omnipresent divine Mental 
upon the individual mentality, which I believe is 
that organization we call the soul. 

“ Anything which makes for higher thinking 
and better living is a good thing, and anything 
which develops the individual mentality in har- 
mony with the divine mentality is helping to work 
out the great divine scheme of life.” 


CHAPTER II 


A month has gone past since I talked last to 
you, Little Lady. Just think of that. Thirty 
beautiful days slipped away while you were turn- 
ing the page. How time does fly, to be sure ; but 
it matters not, for there is just as much of it left 
as ever. I imagine time to be a circle, a wheel, 
made up of two eternities, and life is co-existent. 
The wheel turns slowly round, and the process 
of its turning gradually creates human souls, 
which grow and develop in this strange machinery. 
At definite places in the revolving circle is a dense 
visible physical life, and between these visible 
physical lives are rests, or places where souls can 
move more freely, unhampered by the gross phys- 
ical of the darker places. In these lighter spots 
the universal light which envelops the great wheel 
shines through and through the rarified physical, 
while the darker places are so gross and sleeping 
that the light cannot fully penetrate ; and yet, as 
each soul passes along its journey, now in the 
dark, now in the light, gradually the darker 
places are becoming rarified and filled with light 
by the influence of these souls’ progress, until 
the end will be that there will be no more darkness, 
but the whole circle will be full of light. 

I have seen Kate many times during this past 
28 


“ WAYSIDE ” 


29 


month, for she often comes into the office where I 
busy myself, and twice she and her uncle and aunt 
have passed the evening with me at “ Wayside.” 
We are growing to be very good friends. She 
calls me “ Uncle Jack ” at my request, and I call 
her Kate, and she seems to feel at home at “ Way- 
side,” which pleases me very much. To-night she 
will go home with me to dinner, and her uncle 
and aunt are to come out later, as also are some 
other friends, among them Robert and Charles. 
It seems very proper and appropriate for Kate 
to be sitting opposite me at the dinner table, and 
it brings back vividly those days of the long ago, 
when the “ Only Girl ” presided there so grace- 
fully. They are very nearly alike, those two, not 
only in looks but in manners and ways of thinking, 
and I find m^^self growing fonder of this girl 
every day. 

“ Uncle Jack,” said Kate, “ I wish that you 
would tell me about this terrible religious belief 
of yours, of which my uncle and aunt seem so 
much afraid. I have been brought up in the 
Church of England faith, and I know very little 
of any other.” 

“ Well, Kate, I will tell you something of the 
confident conclusions at which I have arrived after 
years of study and careful thought. It is a be- 
lief which brings me happiness, and health, and 
contentment in every day of life. 

“ First, I believe the physical body of man to be 
a product of physical evolution, of growth and 


30 


“ WAYSIDE ” 


development from the primary or single cell. I 
believe this evolution, this growth and develop- 
ment, to have been made not only possible, but 
inevitable, because of the omnipresence, the in- 
dwelling in all the universe, of an omnipotent and 
omniscient intelligence, which is a moving force. 
I believe that coincident with and accompanying 
this evolution of the physical form, there has ever 
been an evolution of mind; that individual men- 
talities have evolved and developed as forms grew 
more complex and more perfect, until at last a 
mental form has been created in tbe invisible men- 
tal material which is omnipresent, and which per- 
meates the physical. I believe that the great law , 
of attraction has had much to do with the devel- 
opment of the physical form, and it has had much 
to do also with the development of the mental 
form. The mental which permeates the physical 
form has gradually achieved an organization, — 
a corporation, a centralized energy, held in union 
by this law of attraction and affinity, and bound 
together by the power of a gradually developing 
memory, a memory of congenial life experience 
constantly growing stronger until this mental 
form has become able to persist as an organization 
by itself, after tbe disintegration of the visible 
physical body, long enough to enter another form- 
ing physical body and so gain another experience 
in the physical life. Now, if you think of this 
continuing mental organization as the soul of man, 
and the omnipresent mental force or intelligence 


“ WAYSIDE ” 


31 


as Deity, you will see the point where your belief 
and mine come together, for we both believe there 
is a soul and a Deity which created it. If you 
have caught my meaning thus far, Kate, we had 
better leave the subject now for you to think over, 
and mentally digest, and we will take it up again 
at some future time. However, you will find that 
I believe the world is good, and that the divine 
plan is working out perfectly, and has done so 
without a halt or a hesitation since the begin- 
ning.” 

“ I think that I understand you,” said Kate, 
“ and I can see nothing very terrible in it. I will 
study it over in my mind, as you say, and ask you 
questions about it later. I, myself, believe that 
people are much better than we give them credit 
for. They do not like to be driven, but if put 
upon their honor, few would prove anything but 
honorable.” 

“ Yes,” I said, “ my wife held that same opin- 
ion also, and after she came here to live she made 
a trial of her theory. In those days we had many 
callers at the door for a ‘ bite to eat ’ or a place 
to sleep, and my wife thought it would be a fine 
thing to build a little lodge down by the gateway, 
at the roadside, and donate its use to the weary 
passers-by. So we built a comfortable httle house 
there, containing a fair-sized living room, two bed- 
rooms, a bathroom, and a small kitchen. We fur- 
nished the place decently, putting in stoves, cook- 
ing utensils, dishes, table and bed linen, with 


32 


“ WAYSIDE ” 


bedding and everything needful, even to soap and 
towels. A good well and pump stood conven- 
iently near, and a generous pile of wood was 
placed at the back door. We left the door un- 
locked, and put a placard on the outside, telling 
what the house was for, and inviting any one who 
chose to use it freely, but requesting care and de- 
cency, and we invited those who needed a meal to 
apply for it at our kitchen door. 

“ Well, I regret to say that, much to my wife’s 
sorrow, the plan was a failure. The house was 
shamefully abused, — the furniture broken and de- 
stroyed, the dishes, cooking utensils, bedding and 
linen were stolen and carried away, and our back 
door was overrun with tramps and vagrants apply- 
ing for food. At last, after a party of dininken 
tramps had spent a riotous night there, in which 
chairs were smashed and windows broken, and the 
house left next morning in a filthy condition, I 
had my men move it back here near this house, 
where we had it cleaned, remodeled, and refur- 
nished, and for many years some one has occu- 
pied it at a very nominal rent, which has been usu- 
ally paid in services about the place. As long as 
we gave it freely it was abused, but as soon as 
rent was paid for it, it was taken care of. You 
may find your own moral. To me it seems to 
show that giving something for nothing is not in 
accordance with the divine scheme of life, and it 
will not do. Also that people are not yet devel- 
oped to that point where they can do without the 


“ WAYSIDE ” 


law. Just now the house is vacant, but I have a 
tenant in view for it who I think will come to- 
morrow. It is a young man about thirty years 
of age, a poet, and a dreamer, and a musician. At 
times he seems inspired, and he touches my soul 
with the music of his violin as no other player ever 
has done. He is not a money maker, has little 
knowledge of the value of a dollar, but even if he 
were hungry himself, would give his last cent to 
any one he thought needed it. He is a composer, 
but not consistent nor persistent enough to ac- 
complish much as yet. What he needs is a 
guardian who loves and understands him, and who 
will guide him into proper channels. I discovered 
him by chance, and found him living in a cheap 
lodging house, where at the time he had less than 
a dollar between himself and want. I have taken 
a fancy to the young fellow and have offered him 
the house to live in, and promised to procure for 
him some pupils to take lessons upon the violin, 
upon which he certainly is a master. His name 
is Philip Rice, and you may see him and hear him 
play the next time you come here.” 

Soon my other guests arrived, Mr. and Mrs. 
Wilson, Mr. and Mrs. Scott, with their son Harry 
and daughter Mabel, Mr. and Mrs. Manning and 
their son Paul. Harry Scott was a physician like 
his father before him, and was succeeding to his 
father’s practice, who was retiring. Harry was 
thirty years of age, and a capable physician. 
Paul Manning had also followed in his father’s 


54 


“ WAYSIDE ” 


footsteps, and was an ordained minister of the 
Presbyterian Church. He was about the same 
age as Harry, and they had been college chums 
together. 

“ I had hard work to get away,” said Harry, 
“ for there is a great deal of sickness at present, 
and I am busy nearly night and day.” 

“ How much of your practice would be unnec- 
essary,” said I, “ if people possessed a good knowl- 
edge of their bodily machines, understood the laws 
governing them, and were willing to obey them ? ” 

“ It would all be unnecessary,” said his father, 
“ if people cared enough about their bodies to un- 
derstand and take care of them, and were willing 
to go to the trouble to keep well. Here is cer- 
tainly a remarkable thing when you come to think 
of it. Health, it is admitted, is our dearest and 
most prized possession, and yet not one person 
out of a hundred is willing to learn and obey the 
laws, obedience to which would bring him continu- 
ous health, and the breaking of which brings him 
sickness. Many people act as though they 
thought that health or sickness were something 
which was thrust upon them by some outside 
power, and they themselves had nothing to do with 
it. They abuse their bodily machines for years 
until sickness ensues, and then they rush to a doc- 
tor and expect to be yanked back into health in a 
few hours or days. The longer I practice medi- 
cine the less value I place upon the administra- 
tion of drugs. Pain and disease come from the 


“ WAYSIDE ” 


35 


efforts of nature to restore the body to harmony, 
and except in very extreme cases, all the patient 
needs to do is to stop breaking the law, and give 
nature a chance to cure, which she will do in every 
case where cure is possible at all.” 

“ Looking at the matter in the strict sense,” I 
said, “ I do not believe that any human being 
has any right to be sick, under ordinary circum- 
stances at least. If we consider that Deity is 
omnipotent and omnipresent, and is in absolute 
control of the universe, then the laws which gov- 
ern the universe down to its minutest detail, are 
divine laws, and to be obeyed. Then the health 
laws are to be obeyed as much as the moral laws, 
and it is just as surely a sin to be sick as it is to 
be otherwise wicked. I do not see how we can 
logically make any distinction. Ignorance of the 
law will not excuse us from the penalty, and I do 
not believe that any soul will ever enter any per- 
manent heaven, until that soul has learned to obey 
every law of life and being.” 

“ Then you do not believe that sick people when 
they die can go to heaven?” asked Paul Man- 
ning. 

“ No,” I said, “ I do not believe there are any 
sick people in heaven, nor do I believe that any 
soul from a sick and diseased body ever goes di- 
rect to any heaven, but I do believe that all such 
souls have another chance to live in a physical 
body, and that they will continue to have such 
chances or opportunities until they finally learn 


66 “ WAYSIDE ” 

the laws, and by obeying them, reach a state of 
physical and moral health which constitutes heaven 
of itself.” 

“ Then you think that the soul after death 
comes back into this physical life again, do you ? ” 

“ Yes, I do,” I said. “ If the soul persists at 
all it must go somewhere, and receive its reward 
or punishment, and to what possible place could 
it go where it would reap its just deserts as surely 
and quickly and justly as to come right back into 
this physical life, and face the harvest of its own 
acts.? Before any heaven worth while is ever ac- 
complished, all souls occupying it must have 
reached the same state of development of strength 
and health and serenity, and as all mental growth, 
which is soul growth, is made in this physical life 
so far as we have any evidence, then it follows 
rationally that enough physical life will be given 
each soul to enable it to develop into that condi- 
tion which would fit and entitle it to a life in 
heaven.” 

“ If you two do not stop talking religion,” said 
Mabel, “ we shall miss the music which we all so 
much enjoy, for it is already growing late, and 
there is absolutely no end to these religious dis- 
cussions. Please let us change the order of the 
meeting, and have a season of song.” 

Complying with her request, I took up my vio- 
lin, while Kate seated herself at the piano, and 
soon the old house resounded with a melody which 
filled its every nook and corner. Both young men 


“ WAYSIDE ” 


37 


were good singers, and Mabel had a fine alto voice, 
and the harmony which resulted caused us all to 
feel at peace with the world. I believe that mu- 
sic is a distinctly curative agent, and is a great 
factor in the evolution of the world toward that 
kingdom which we believe will some day come to 
be. 

After my guests had departed I sat down be- 
fore the fire for my customary evening reverie. 
There has grown upon me of late a curious habit. 
As I lie back in my easy chair and close my eyes, 
or gaze steadily into the fire, there comes to my 
half-waking sense a strange feeling that I am not 
alone, but that my wife sits beside me as of yore, 
or sometimes it is Kate who is sitting there, and 
the sense of the long ago thrills me with its near- 
ness. What is there about this girl, quite above 
and beyond her resemblance to the “ Only Girl ” 
in looks and voice, which appeals to me so 
strongly ? It is a feeling which I can not define, — 
a lingering thought in my consciousness that she 
is more to me than a friend or acquaintance, and 
that her wonderful eyes hold a message for me if 
I could only interpret it. It seems as though the 
soul of the “ Only Girl ” has been calling to me 
of late through the medium of this girl who so 
resembles her. I am strongly drawn toward her 
by a feeling which I cannot quite understand. 
At times I catch myself watching her intently, 
eagerly, half as though I expected her to turn 
into the “ Only Girl ” before my very eyes, be- 


38 


“ WAYSIDE ” 


cause of some well remembered tone of voice, or 
way, or manner which wakes my very inner con- 
sciousness, and sets the chords of my secret soul 
to vibrating in response. Her presence comes to 
my heart like a sweet strain of music, soft and 
low, out of the far beyond. Her soul is kindred, 
I know, to the dear one I lost so long ago. She 
is fair and sweet and good to look upon, and she 
has the same little shy, delicate tricks of manner 
which made the “ Only Girl ” so dear to me. It 
seems as though there was something about her 
which whispers of nearness to God, and a fineness 
and knowledge of purity which my coarse, mascu- 
line mind cannot fathom or understand. I often 
felt that way about my wife, — as though there 
were depths of purity in her being which it were 
profanity for me to approach. 

I think I must be calling continually out into 
the silence of the unknown to an influence I know 
is there, and from which I half expect some mes- 
sage in reply ; but none comes quite direct. I 
am longing for “ the touch of a vanished hand, 
and the sound of a voice that is still,” and some- 
times a message is flashed back to me through a 
kindred soul like this, and while I do not quite 
feel the touch of the vanished hand, I almost hear 
the voice, and something else and more out of the 
depths of eternity seems to look at me through 
the windows of this other nearby soul. This is 
what we shall find, I believe, when we reach at last 
the perfect heaven, — just souls akin, and in each 


“ WAYSIDE ” 


and every one we will see and love something of 
our own. I am sitting to-night in the valley of 
yearning, making by faith a wireless connection 
in eternity with a reality which is beyond my 
present vision. 

Then once there came to my slumbering senses 
a dream which was not all a dream, for in the 
depths of my memory-consciousness there exists, 
plain and clear and tangible, the background of 
reality from which this dream came. I stand 
upon the crowded street and the hurrying multi- 
tude passes me by, some east, some west, contin- 
uously. I look into the faces but I do not know 
them, and yet there seems to be a friendliness, a 
comradeship, in this jostling crowd, as though 
there was something of it to which I belonged or 
which belonged to me, — a certain feeling that 
these were friends of mine, only I could not quite 
remember them. Suddenly a pair of deep, dark 
eyes of brown are looking into mine, and the 
‘‘ Only Girl ” separates from the crowd and stands 
by my side, as she used to do long ago. I speak 
to her and reach out to touch her, and it is not she, 
but Kate, and then in a moment not Kate either, 
but another, which may be you. Little Lady, and 
then in the whole crowd I see, here a trace of her, 
there a look like you, — a something in each face 
and form which reminds me of the love which fills 
all eternity for me. 

I walk into the house and a little child runs to 
meet me, with outstretched arms and joyous eyes. 


40 “ WAYSIDE ” 

— my baby girl, that dear young soul, who for 
that fond time, so short, so short, dwelt in my 
home and life and heart, and gave me joy and 
happiness. Yet it is not she, but that other sweet 
baby in my friend’s house yonder, and then even 
she changes to the small, smiling girl I saw but 
now upon the street who, when I smiled at her, 
looked into my eyes and laughed in perfect inno- 
cence and friendliness. 

I stand by the lake at “ Wayside,” in God’s 
great, beautiful out-of-doors, and watch the sun- 
shine dance upon the shining, tremulous, happy 
leaves, while the soft wind carries to my grateful 
ear the songs of joyous birds and the harmony of 
a world made perfect. A clear, sweet voice is 
raised in song, a voice which thrills me in every 
fibre of my being, — the sweetest sound in the 
world to me, — and the “ Only Girl ” again stands 
by my side, happy, radiant, beautiful. Then in 
some wonderful way, while it is still she, it is also 
Kate, and then another, which may be you, and 
then another, and not even you, but yet always 
the “ Only Girl,” and in some strange way this 
seems all right to me, and not mysterious. 

I sit in my room by the open fire, — the old fa- 
miliar room, — this room, my dear, with its south 
window, its wide fireplace, its walls lined with our 
loved books, and the “ Only Girl ” sits beside me. 
Then it is not she, but Kate, then you, and then 
another whom I now recognize as the angel of 
memory, whom God has sent to bring me happi- 


“ WAYSIDE ” 


41 


ness, if I have earned it. Hark ! the angel speaks. 

“ God has sent me to you, dear child, to tell 
you that in each and every woman whom you 
meet there is some part or trait of that dear wife 
you loved so well. In each little child is some at- 
tribute or look of the baby girl whose picture is 
enshrined in your heart of hearts. In each friend 
you now have is some part of that dearest friend 
you loved so well, and it is God’s wish and desire 
and command that you recognize and acknowledge 
this resemblance in all his children whom you 
meet in daily contact, for only thus will it be in 
that heaven which he has prepared for you, whose 
many mansions will contain only friends, and never 
enemies.” 


CHAPTER III 


It is Christmas Day in the afternoon, Evelyn, 
and another month has slipped away into a past 
eternity since I talked to you last. I have had no 
callers to-day, and although I received several in- 
vitations to join in festivities at other places, I 
decided to pass the day here with my books and 
my memories. A fierce storm of wind and snow 
has been raging outside for several hours, and if 
it keeps up much longer the roads will be impass- 
able. However, it is snug and warm inside, and a 
bright, cheerful fire is blazing upon the hearth. 

Several things have happened in this past thirty 
days. Little Lady, and I will talk to you a little 
about them. Philip Rice has occupied the little 
house for a month now, and he seems to be very 
contented there. He is a very lovable fellow, but 
as impractical as a child. I still see Kate quite 
often, and I understand that both Harry Scott 
and Paul Manning have discovered a great attrac- 
tion about the Wilson home, and are there at 
every opportunity. Mabel says that Harry seems 
very anxious about bis patient in the Wilson 
house, and she thinks the case must be a danger- 
ous one. Kate has been at “ Wayside ” several 
times lately, and she and Philip have passed hours 
42 


“ WAYSIDE ” 


43 


together with their music ; also Philip has gone to 
her home with his violin to have her accompany 
him on the piano. 

Day before yesterday Kate and Mabel, with 
Harry and Paul, passed the evening here with me, 
and we had Philip in with his violin. It was one 
of his times of inspiration, and after he and Kate 
had played together for some time, an incident 
occurred which has since caused me some uneasi- 
ness. He was standing by the piano and Kate 
was sitting upon the stool, her hands resting in 
her lap and her gaze fixed upon the floor. She 
seemed to be in a half-dreaming state. Then 
Philip lifted his violin and commenced to play 
softly. It was a harmony which had never been 
set to note, one of those improvised melodies of 
which his soul seems full. We all sat entranced 
by the beautiful music. He played as though all 
else but the music was forgotten, with his gaze 
fixed upon Kate’s face, when suddenly she lifted 
her head and looked him full in the eyes. For an 
instant their eyes clung to each other, and I saw 
her face go white, then flushed, and she arose from 
her seat and moved away. Pie stopped playing 
upon the instant, and putting his violin in the 
case, bade us all “ Good-night,” and went to his 
little house, and we saw him no more that evening. 
What passed between them in that look I can only 
guess, but that some message was delivered which 
both understood I am very sure. I know that a 
message can be thus conveyed, for thus I spoke 


44 ‘‘ WAYSIDE ” 

upon occasion with the “ Only Girl,” and the mem- 
ory of it is very perfect to me. 

I had gone to her home one beautiful October 
day, determined to put my fate to the test and tell 
her the old, old story. We had walked down to- 
gether to the shore of the lake, and were standing 
there silently. I was rehearsing in my mind the 
carefully prepared speech which I had intended 
to make, when I looked up suddenly and found 
her eyes fixed upon my face. I gazed deep down 
into those amber depths and read there the an- 
swer, clear and plain, to the question I was about 
to ask. 

“ Sweetheart,” I cried, clasping her in my arms. 

“ Yes,” she whispered, as she hid her face upon 
my shoulder, then raised her willing lips to re- 
ceive my first kiss. There was no need of speech. 
The question had been asked and answered. 

That some message like that passed between 
Philip and Kate I am convinced, and that they 
each realized that the other knew and understood 
I am very sure. The memory of this haunted me 
this Christmas night and made me uneasy, as I 
arose and looked out of the window. 

The storm was still raging violently and dark- 
ness was beginning to gather, when there came a 
sound of voices at my door, and Kate and Mabel 
and Harry came into the room, shaking the snow 
from their garments. They had been out for a 
Christmas ride, had been caught in the storm, and 
had experienced great difficulty in getting as far 


“ WAYSIDE ” 


45 


as “ Wayside.” I told them to ’phone to their 
people where they were, and to stay all night in 
my house, which they decided to do. A little later 
a neighbor called up and said there was a party 
of young people at his house, and if I were alone 
they wanted to come over and have a little dance. 
I told them to come along, and soon they arrived, 
a merry, laughing company, filling the old house 
with the music of many happy voices. Philip was 
routed out, and as he also had company, a couple 
of his musical friends having paid him a visit, 
we soon had the old hall in the third story re- 
sounding to the enlivening music of the dance and 
the sound of rhythmic flying feet. 

After the dance was over, the neighboring 
young people had departed, and my guests had 
gone to their rooms, I went back down to the great 
living room, and sitting down before the dying 
embers of the fire, gave myself up to the memory 
of another Christmas Day long ago, when there 
had also been a merry party in the old house, and 
she and I had come down to this same place after- 
wards when the house was still, and had sat down 
together where I am now sitting alone. Alone 
to-night, but I can call up those blessed memories 
of the long ago when I, too, had a wife and child. 

As I close my eyes, dear silent memory comes 
whispering sweet stories to my eager listening ear, 
and with soft voice and loving words lures me 
back again to that Christmas night of long ago, 
and a picture floats before me like a glimpse of 


46 


“ WAYSIDE ” 


paradise, which holds for me all the dear treasures 
of my heart’s desire, — this very room, a fire like 
this in the great fireplace, the lights turned low, 
two easy chairs before the fire, in one of which I 
am, and in the other my wife, the “ Only Girl.” 
Suddenly we are conscious that a little white- 
robed figure is coming down the stairs, and my 
dear little baby girl, who has been awakened in 
some way from her sleep, comes climbing into my 
lap to give papa another good-night kiss and to 
say another little prayer at mamma’s knee be- 
cause it is Christmas Day and she is so glad. I 
fold the sweet little figure in my arms, and look 
over her curly head straight into the great hazel- 
brown eyes of the “ Only Girl,” — those eyes, 
those wonderful, beautiful eyes, in whose never- 
ending depths I can see and almost read the wis- 
dom of the ages, and something more, a great, 
wonderful secret of God, which can never be told 
in words, but is carried thus to favored souls by 
one of his elect. What is this infinite secret which 
I always could see in your eyes, my love, and could 
almost translate into words Is it a divine in- 
timation of the after-life, a hint of what the resur- 
rection means and is, — a message that in and 
beyond this physical body stands the soul, ready 
to rise into life everlasting when the physical 
loosens its hold and lets it goF Surely it is God’s 
secret of immortality looking out of your eyes 
of mystery, my wife, my love, and your soul is 
calling to mine to-night across the barrier which 


‘‘ WAYSIDE ’’ 


47 


this physical has placed between us, and my soul 
answers that I will not fail you, sweetheart, but 
will meet you again in God’s good time. 

There was always a message for me in your 
eyes, my love, from the first day on which they 
looked into mine to that last day when you parted 
from me forever with a kiss. Always I found 
there comfort and help and love and compensation 
in full for any and all cares which the world could 
bring me. And to-night, this Christmas nighty 
they still carry that message across the years, 
and bring me peace and resignation and hope. 

A light hand falls upon my shoulder, and look- 
ing up suddenly, I behold by my side my wife, 
my darling wife of that dear yesterday which is 
separated from me only by the years. 

“ O Sweetheart,” I cried, and seized her hands, 
but it was Kate who answered, although in the 
tones and accent of the “ Only Girl.” 

“ Why, Uncle Jack,” she said, “ how I must 
have startled you, but I knew that you were here, 
and I wanted to talk to you.” 

“ Sit down, my dear,” I said. “ I was just 
dreaming of my wife, and at first I thought that 
you were she.” 

“ Uncle Jack,” she said, “ you believe in divine 
control ; now do you not believe that there is some 
influence, some power which plans for us, and 
which does not leave us quite free ourselves, — 
something, I mean, which leads us on into situa- 
tions which we really would not deliberately 


48 “ WAYSIDE ” 

choose of ourselves, and which in a certain sense 
compels us to do its bidding? ” 

“ No, my dear, I do not believe that there is 
any power or force or influence which interferes 
in the least with our own free moral or mental 
agency, or which compels us against our will to 
any course of action. We often would be glad to 
lay the blame for our actions upon some mysteri- 
ous power which compels us, but I believe that we 
are absolutely free, under the law, in our mental 
operations, and that is why we must stand the full 
penalty of transgression ourselves. If we break 
any law we will suffer the penalty surely and cer- 
tainly, and there is no power which can forgive 
us and thus turn the penalty aside. Sin, in the 
last analysis, is a mental thing. If we do wrong 
there is no escape from the memory of that wrong, 
and there is no power which can suddenly wipe out 
the memory of the wrong without wiping us out 
at the same time. It is a sure and certain fact 
to me that whatever it is that persists after the 
change we call death must of necessity carry the 
memory with it, or it would not be us, but some- 
thing else quite different. Take our memory 
away and we are gone, for it is only by this that 
we know ourselves to be ourselves. Without the 
memory a soul would be a blank, a nothing, a 
thing without personality or individuality, and 
having no concern for itself.” 

“ Well,” said Kate, “ if memory lasts with the 
soul, and the soul is born again into another body. 


“ WAYSIDE ” 


49 


why does it not remember its former existence? ” 

“ Because the new brain in the new body has 
nothing to remember, it having had no former ex- 
perience with the soul which is now using it. The 
brain is simply the machine, the instrument, which 
the mind, the soul, uses to function in during a 
physical life, and the brain can not respond to 
any experience which it has not had. Anything 
outside of its own experience is but a dream, a 
vision, a fancy, and there is no way to prove it 
true, because it does not come within this brain’s 
physical experience. The subconscious mind, or 
the inner soul, itself possesses memory of all of its 
own experience, which has been made up of differ- 
ent experiences in the physical life, and each phys- 
ical life adds its part to the soul growth, the mem- 
ory being the power by which it holds the results 
of that physical life experience. 

“ Now, my dear, let me give you a fatherly word 
of advice. Do not decide too hastily that you 
are being led, or driven, or impelled into any act 
or thing or destiny in which you are not free to 
decide for yourself, and for which you are not to 
be responsible. Do not try to hurry fate, but 
know that if you serenely and cheerfully do your 
very best, the Good Law will carry you to happi- 
ness, surely and certainly.” 

“ Thank you. Uncle Jack, and now before I go 
back upstairs, please let us sing just softly, by 
ourselves, that dearest love song which you and 
I love so well.” 


50 “ WAYSIDE ” 

And so we sang together the song which my wife 
and I sang on that last night in which I ever saw 
her alive. 

When I retired my mind was still full of this 
recollection, and I went to sleep with Kate’s voice 
still in my consciousness, and the remembrance of 
that long past time when I first heard a voice like 
that, and the strange dream which followed it. 
Then I had another most wonderful dream, like 
the first, and just as clear and real. My dream 
commenced with a feeling that I was just inside a 
wall surrounding a castle of the olden time. Be- 
fore me was the building, and behind me was the 
wall. Between myself and the castle there was a 
growth of bushes and small trees, and inside the 
castle a voice was singing softly and sweetly this 
same song which we had sung to-night. The 
voice, I knew, came from the girl I loved, and to it 
every fibre of my soul responded. My errand 
there was to see her, but how I had reached the 
place where I was I do not know. These things 
are easy — in dreams. I thought that I must see 
the girl secretly, for this was the house of an 
enemy. I crept forward stealthily until I reached 
a door, which I opened. Guided by the voice, I 
went through one room and then another, then 
through another door, and I stood in a long low, 
stone-walled room, with a grated window at each 
end. The singer saw me and with a glad cry came 
to meet me. The girl was Kate, only not dressed 
as I had ever seen her, but with my wife’s beauti- 


« WAYSIDE ” 


51 


fill eyes and hair, and when she spoke to me it 
was with my wife’s voice, which thrilled me from 
head to foot. 

“ Oh,” she said, “ you must not come here. Do 
you not know that my father would kill you if he 
found you here.? ” 

“ But he will not find me,” I isaid, “ for I 
watched him go away from the castle with all his 
men-at-arms. I have come for you, my dear, and 
will take you to my home, for I cannot live with- 
out you.” 

“ I cannot go,” she said. 

“ Why, do you not love me ? ” 

“ Yes, I love you, but if I go with you it will 
mean the death of many men, for my father will 
fight for my return. You must not stay here; go 
now before my father returns and finds you.” 

Just at that moment came the sound of many 
tramping feet. The wide door at one side of the 
room opened to admit the girl’s father and several 
of his captains, while there filed in at the opposite 
side of the room a company of soldiers, who 
ranged themselves in line along the wall. 

“ So,” said the father, “ we have caught you, 
and do you know the penalty.? ” 

“ Yes,” I said, ‘‘ I do.” And turning to the 
girl, I kissed her and said, “ Good-bye, my dear ; 
you had better go now if you can, because this will 
be no fit place for a lady presently. I am ready 
to take the long journey,” I said to the father, 
“ for the girl is worth it, and I am not sorry that I 


5a “ WAYSIDE ” 

came ; but I promise you that I will not go alone, 
for at least one or two of your fellows will bear me 
company.” 

The old man smiled. 

“ Good ! ” he said ; “ now I will give you a 
chance for life. Here are three of my captains, 
every one of them a fighter. You can fight these 
three men here and now, one at a time, my men to 
choose the weapons, and if you kill them all you 
may have the girl for a wife.” 

The first man chose war clubs, but he soon went 
down before me with a broken neck and a crushed 
skull. The next chose battle axes, and although 
he was a strong and active man, he was no match 
for me at this, I knew, and after a few moments’ 
furious fighting I cleft his head to the chin with a 
quick swing of my axe. We do these things easily 
and well — in dreams. 

The last man chose swords, and as I looked at 
his athletic and active figure, I knew that before 
me lay the fight of my life. But I, too, was strong 
and quick and muscular, and as I looked down at 
my brawny arms, bare to the shoulder, I did not 
fear the issue. He was a master of the sword, as 
I was, this brave, confident captain, and we fought 
up and down the room, — thrust, parry, guard, — 
first one giving ground and then the other, but 
neither gaining any decided advantage until, as 
we were fighting in the western end of the room, 
with my face toward the window, the sun suddenly 
shone out, and a ray struck me full in the eyes, — 


“ WAYSIDE ” 


53 


for a moment dazzling my sight, — and in that 
moment I felt his sword pierce my left side. As 
he drew it forth, the hot blood leaped out after it 
and splashed upon the stone floor of the room. 
Then I felt my strength failing, and slowly but 
steadily I gave way before him. I was losing fast 
when the girl’s clear, vibrant voice came to my 
ear, as she leaned toward me with every muscle 
tense and rigid in her excitement. 

“ Take heart, my love, you must not fail.” 

Like a flash my brain cleared and my strength 
came back in answer to that voice which moved my 
very soul into activity. I stood my ground and 
more, — I could even drive him back, but I could 
not reach him with a sword thrust. Oh, if I could 
only get the sun in his eyes for an instant, as it 
had been in mine ; but the sun only came out from 
between the clouds for a moment at a time, and I 
did not know when that moment would come. The 
girl seemed to know my thought, for her voice 
rang out again. 

“ Try it,” she said. “ I will tell you when to be 
ready.” 

I knew her meaning in an instant. I was to 
get my antagonist where the sun shone when it 
came through the window, and she would tell me 
when it was coming. Slowly I forced him to that 
spot upon the floor where I desired him and kept 
him there. Suddenly the girl called to me, 
“ Ready now, quick,” and I stepped swiftly to the 
right, and as he swung round to face me, the sun 


54 * 


“ WAYSIDE ” 


once more shot a ray of light through the grated 
window square into his eyes. The next moment 
my blade went through his body, and his sword 
fell clattering to the floor, just as my senses reeled 
and unconsciousness overcame me. 

When I again opened my eyes I was lying upon 
my bed in my room at “ Wayside,” and the rising 
sun was streaming into my face. The dream was 
so real and vivid that I involuntarily put my hand 
to my side, half expecting it to be covered with 
blood. 


CHAPTER IV 


My home at “ Wayside ” is brilliantly illumi- 
nated to-night, Little Lady, and there is music 
and dancing and happy, youthful voices coming 
from the third story, while below stairs there are 
gathered around the genial fireplace some half- 
dozen older heads, some of them the fathers and 
mothers of the gay children upstairs, and with 
them Charles and Robert and your friend John, 
who talks to you. 

We have been up watching the dancers, and some 
of us partaking in a limited way, for age brings 
moderation and conservatism if it possess also 
sense. And now we are enjoying ourselves in our 
own way, which every one should have a right to 
do, so long as that way is innocent and does not 
reflect upon our neighbor. 

“ That is a happy company of young people,” 
said Charles, and I would wish that they might 
always be as happy and full of life and health as 
they are to-night; and so I think they might be 
if they all understood the laws, and were willing 
to obey them.” 

‘‘ What are these laws which you make so much 
oi? ” asked an elderly lady whose son and daugh- 
ter were among the merry set upstairs. “ There 
55 


56 “ WAYSIDE ” 

is a great deal said in these days about the laws, 
but there are few who tell us what they are.” 

“ One of the first laws,” said Charles, “ is to 
have a knowledge of self, for each one should know 
his own needs and capacities, his own limitations 
and requirements. There can be no ironclad rule 
laid down for every person, for we all live under 
different conditions and possess varying capaci- 
ties. In the last analysis, ill health can be almost 
limited to two primary causes, — some imperfec- 
tion in or with the blood, and some imperfection 
in the nervous system. So long as the blood is 
perfectly adapted to the needs of the body and 
the circulation is perfect, and so long as the nerv- 
ous system is in perfect adjustment, there can be 
no sickness, for the general bodily health will be 
able to expel any enemy which enters the citadel, 
but if through too much food or too little, — and 
food in this sense includes drink also, — or if 
through the wrong kind of food or drink, or the 
lack of oxygen through improper or inadequate 
breathing, the blood stream finds itself unable to 
perform its functions properly, or if through 
worry or wrong thinking or lack of proper care 
the nervous system becomes deranged, there will 
soon result a lack of general bodily tone, which will 
manifest itself sooner or later in what we some- 
times call a local disease, although, properly 
speaking, there can be no such thing as a local dis- 
ease while the remainder of the body is in perfect 
health and strength. Our body is not a collection 


WAYSIDE ” 


57 


of separate parts loosely gathered together, and 
each part working independently of the others, 
but a unit, a one, a machine operating so sym- 
pathetically, with each part so dependent upon 
the other, that what we call a local disease is but 
the manifestation in one part or place of a great 
strain which is being put upon the whole system, 
and which shows in that particular place because 
of a concentration of pressure there, or because 
that place is the weakest link in the chain. The 
symptoms of disease show the effort which nature 
is making to throw off or expel some great inhar- 
mony within ; so the symptoms are beneficent and 
should be helped and encouraged, while our efforts 
should be directed to finding and removing the 
cause of the disturbance, and by careful and con- 
sistent effort, so build up the general health that 
the machine will have the strength to regulate it- 
self, which it will do in every case if given the help 
which right living affords, provided we do not 
delay until too late the removal of the cause. 
Nothing brings disease but wrong living, and I 
consider a bad digestion a more sure indication 
of wrong living than is a guilty conscience, for 
digestion never is mistaken, and conscience some- 
times is.” 

“ But you are a physician ; do you not believe 
in the use of drugs ? ” 

“ Except as a last resort and in extreme cases, 
no. Drugs do not cure, for it is nature, after all, 
which is the only curative agent, and if nature 


58 “ WAYSIDE ” 

was given proper opportunity and consideration 
in the beginning, there would be no need of drugs.” 

“ I think,” said Robert, “ that Charles’ state- 
ment of the unity of the body corresponds to my 
opinion of the unity of life. We are each a part 
of life, — of the great life which fills the universe, — 
and all life is one, and is bound together by such 
sympathetic bonds that one atom in this life can- 
not go wrong without injuring in some degree or 
sense the universal life. Each of us contributes 
to the great body of life whatever we are. If we 
are wicked or immoral, or sick or unhappy, we are 
an irritating factor in the great Life, and so out 
of harmony with the beneficent scheme of existence. 
I agree with John that no person has a moral 
right to be sick or unhappy any more than he has 
to be otherwise wicked, for we have no moral right 
to bring inharmony into the divine plan of things 
when by simply obeying the laws we can avoid it.” 

“ But sometimes people become sick when they 
cannot avoid it, do they not.^^ ” 

“ Never,” said Charles, “ if we except accident, 
which sometimes seems unavoidable, but even in 
those cases, whatever comes to us by seemingly 
unavoidable accident should be borne graciously 
and uncomplainingly, because we have no right to 
add any mite to the inharmony of the world.” 

“ What would you consider the cardinal rules 
for good health ” 

“ Proper care in the food supply to adapt it to 
our needs; proper amount of fresh air and out- 


“ WAYSIDE ” 


59 


door bodily exercise ; proper attention to our 
nervous system to keep it in normal condition; 
proper mental attitudes, which includes the entire 
absence of worry, and proper cleanliness and so- 
briety of both mind and body. These things, if 
correctly and continuously observed, cannot fail 
to bring us continued health and continued happi- 
ness.” 

“ I do not believe,” said Robert, “ in the sup- 
pression of natural desires so much as in their 
education and direction into proper channels. It 
is a natural thing for young people to love to 
dance, as these are doing upstairs now, and I can 
see no wrong in allowing them to do so under such 
circumstances as the present. It is the unli- 
censed, unlimited, undirected indulgence, or the 
unnatural suppression which works the injury. 
To my mind, either extreme is wrong. The 
mother who allows her son or her daughter to 
come to such a place as this and enter freely into 
the innocent enjoyments of an evening like this, 
under her own and other mothers’ and fathers’ di- 
rection, is doing her duty in this matter to her 
children, as I view the matter, always allowing that 
the dangers and evils of excess or improper asso- 
ciation are properly pointed out to those children, 
and that they are educated to love and desire only 
the clean and orderly manners and ways of life.” 

As he finished speaking, the music ceased up- 
stairs, and soon the young people came troop- 
ing down. The dance was over for the evening. 


60 « WAYSIDE ” 

and soon the old house was still and silent again. 

This is February, Evelyn, and this evening 
party is but one of several which my young 
friends have held at “ Wayside ” since the winter 
days have come, for I love to have youth about 
me, and the old house rejoices in their presence. 
Kate and Mabel and Harry are here to-night, and 
I heard, as I listened, the tones of Philip’s violin in 
the old hall above. Paul would not come because 
he does not approve of dancing, and he is inclined 
to take life rather seriously. Kate and Mabel are 
to stay until to-morrow and go into the city with 
me, but the rest of the guests are leaving at twelve 
o’clock, for we keep good hours at “ Wayside.” 

My love for this girl is increasing every day, 
and I often find her image in my mind as I sit 
dreaming here alone in the evening, and her face 
comes to me in those visions of the night, when my 
physical body is asleep and at rest. Out of the 
somewhere come these thought stories of Kate 
and the “ Only Girl,” my wife, and sometimes it is 
difficult to tell them apart. I am sitting now 
alone in front of the fire, waiting for Kate, for she 
always comes down for a little last talk with me 
after the others are gone. She is coming now 
down the wide stairs, and I can hardly realize that 
I have not traveled back through the years, and 
that it is not my wife who comes, as she used to 
come long ago. 

Kate ignores the chair which I have placed for 
her, and sits down instead upon a low seat at my 


“ WAYSIDE ” 


61 


feet. The firelight gleams and glistens upon the 
brown masses of her hair, bringing the tint of gold 
plainly into evidence. 

“ Uncle Jack,” she says, “ what sort of a place 
do you imagine heaven to be.? ” 

“ Well, Kate, I do not conceive of heaven as any 
particular place at all, but just a condition in 
which we find ourselves when we reach complete 
happiness.” 

“ But shall we not know each other there.? ” 

“ Yes, and no. We shall not meet any stran- 
gers outside of this physical life, for I believe that 
we are only a conscious memory then, and the 
only experience we will have is the remembrance 
of the physical life we have been through. I be- 
lieve that the physical life is given us for the pur- 
pose of growth. I conceive that our soul, our 
mental consciousness, started and developed in the 
physical, and has evolved to be what it is through 
physical life experience, and it will continue to 
grow and develop in the same way. There is no 
reason that I can see why we should think that 
there is some other mysterious place where the 
laws are different than here. The Deity, as I 
conceive it, is one and the same, always and every- 
where, and operates through the same laws every- 
where. 

“ I can imagine no better heaven than a perfect 
physical life in a perfect physical world, and I 
face the prospect of another life in the physical 
with absolute serenity. Believing that I will be 


62 “ WAYSIDE ” 

helped or hampered in that life as I live this one, 
as I develop in this one, it is the part of good 
sense for me to so live this one that my circum- 
stances and condition will be agreeable in that one. 
It is my business to develop all the harmonious 
mental strength possible now, so that I will have 
a fair start in that life which is to come.” 

After a moment of silence Kate said, 

“ Do you know that Mr. and Mrs. Wilson do 
not like to have me come here.? They are afraid 
that association with you will destroy my faith, 
and their son William is very outspoken in his 
protests. They are all wrapped up in their re- 
ligion, and are very intolerant with any one who 
does not believe as they do. Uncle Jack, with all 
my friends, I am very lonely sometimes, and I 
wish, oh, I don’t know what I wish.” 

“ Kate, my dear,” I said, taking her hand, ‘‘ you 
know that I love you, do you not.? Do you also 
love me, dear.? ” 

“ Yes,” she said faintly, without raising her 
eyes. 

“ Kate,” I said, “ look up here. Will you 
be — ” 

“ Uncle Jack, how old are you.? ” 

“ Sixty years this year, Kate.” 

“ And I am twenty-four. How old would your 
little girl have been if she had lived? ” 

“ Why, she would have been twenty-four also 
this year.” 


“ WAYSIDE ” 63 

“ Well, I will be your little girl if you will let 
me, — only that, dear Uncle Jack, forever.” 

The tears were running down her face now, and 
she bowed her fair head upon my knee. We sat 
there in silence for a time, and then Kate, rising, 
said, 

“ I ought to be very happy with all my friends, 
but someway — ” and she turned and started 
toward the stairs. 

‘‘ Kate,” I said, ‘‘ wait just a moment. I want 
to tell you this. You shall be my little girl from 
this night forth, and I will put you in that place 
in my heart which she would have occupied if she 
had lived. I think she would have been like you, 
dear, for she was growing like her mother, whom 
you so nearly resemble.” 

“Oh, thank you. Uncle Jack, I — I — ” and 
there came a longing, wistful look into her beau- 
tiful eyes, and I knew that there was something 
which she wanted to tell me but did not quite dare. 
“ Good night,” she said, and went quickly up the 
stairs. 

I sat down again in my chair and watched her 
disappear. There was some secret very near to 
utterance behind those sweet lips to-night, and I 
wondered what it was. A moment later there was 
a knock upon the door, and going to it, I admitted 
Philip. 

“ I saw your light, and so came to talk to you,” 
said he. “ I must go away from here and I 


64 


“ WAYSIDE ” 


wanted to tell you about it. I have been very 
happy and contented here, but now I must go, be- 
cause it would not be honorable to stay.” 

“ Do you love Kate.? ” I asked. 

“ Yes,” he answered, “ I love her madly, pas- 
sionately. I am so absorbed in my love for her 
that I can think of nothing else. I hear her voice 
in the music of my violin ; the wind whispers her 
name in the tree tops, and the birds sing it in their 
songs of joy. My dreams are full of her, and 
my waking hours obsessed by her. She is the one 
great fact in the world to me, and I must go away 
before I lose my self-control and tell her. I re- 
alize my lack of financial ability, and I know that 
it would be dishonorable to ask her to share my 
fortunes, even were it possible that she would 
consent. I have an offer of a position as musical 
director in Saint Louis, and will go there at once 
and accept it. I want to thank you for your 
kindness to me, and ask you to keep my secret, 
for others must never know. I am here now to 
bid you good-bye, for I will leave to-morrow.” 

‘‘ Well, Philip,” I said, “ I can sympathize with 
you in your love for Kate, and appreciate the 
wisdom and honor of your decision. Take my 
advice and go, as you propose, and stay until next 
December ; then come back and make me a visit. 
In the meantime work hard and faithfully, and 
do not allow your love for Kate to interfere with 
your success. Keep a brave heart and hold fast 
to hope. Prove yourself a man, worthy, honor- 


“ WAYSIDE ” 


65 


able, capable, and have faith that whatever you 
deserve will surely come to you in the end. Do 
not speak to Kate before you go, nor write to her 
afterwards, and believe that as she is now, she 
will be when you return. Do your honest and 
earnest best, and whatever you so ardently desire 
may some day be yours. And now good night 
and Godspeed, and remember that whenever you 
stand in need of a friend you may certainly count 
on me.” 

With a last handclasp, Philip again bade me 
good-bye, and went silently to his little house, 
while I sat down again before the fire — alone. 

I believe it is a good thing for a man sometimes 
to be alone, — to enter the solitude with his own 
soul, and there face the questions of his life; for 
so must our personal decisions be reached if they 
are to be of any lasting value to us. Friends 
and comrades and companions are necessary for 
our happiness along the journey, but “ when the 
soul goes forth to battle it goes forth alone,” and 
the personal conflicts which bring us strength and 
wisdom and happiness are fought out alone, in the 
silence of our own consciousness. 

I had come perilously near the edge of things 
to-night in my talk with Kate, for I had been 
carried away by my love for her, or for the girl 
whose place she seems to occupy, and I wanted 
the right to shield her from the unnecessary cares 
and annoyances of life, as I had tried to shield 
the “ Only Girl ” before her. I wanted the old 


66 “ WAYSIDE ” 

sense of responsibility for another’s welfare that 
I used to feel in the old days, and which was a 
constant source of joy to me. I believe it to be' 
necessary for every man to have some one person 
to love and care and provide for ; I believe that 
we grow to love God only through our fellow be- 
ings. It seems to me that those old monks who 
shut themselves away from others in order to live 
their selfish, ascetic lives missed the very end and 
aim of existence, which is to love God in our fel- 
low beings rather than in some separate and mys- 
terious way. 

I was going through an experience this night 
which was good for me, for I was learning the les- 
son of adjustment, — that I must live in harmony 
with the good surrounding me in a natural and 
reasonable manner, and not in some selfish, un- 
reasonable way of my own. In my selfish regard 
for Kate I had become almost blind to the fact 
that youth demands youth, — it is the law — and 
age must look in other ways for its compensations. 
I must be satisfied with friendship and acquaint- 
ance with this girl as with others, but reason as 
I might, there still was a pull upon the heart- 
strings for something more than that, — for wife, 
or child, or some one near enough to give me the 
right, above and before all others, to be near them. 
Surely the prophet knew whereof he spoke who 
said, “ Verily, it is not good for man to be alone.” 

Still, I know that I must stand up to the dis- 
cipline of life, for it is the struggle of soul that 


“ WAYSIDE ” 


67 


saves, and life must not be too easy, or thinking 
too easy, because easy thinking is apt to be fool- 
ish thinking, and only effort makes growth. I 
say it over to myself often enough, but it is diffi- 
cult to get away from the fact that I want some 
one to work for, to fight for, and to live for; and 
I want that some one to be — 

But I will not allow myself to grow morbid, 
but take joy to be alive, and to be well and 
straight and strong and able to act a man’s part 
in the world. So I will be smiling and happy and 
ready to take my share in every clean and pleas- 
ant thing which comes to me. The happy memo- 
ries of the past will be mine for always, and my 
endeavor will be to increase them in every possi- 
ble way. 


CHAPTER V 


One evening in April, when I came home from 
the city, I found Kate waiting for me at “ Way- 
side.” 

“ My dear,” I said, ‘‘ this is an unexpected 
pleasure. To what kind fairy am I indebted for 
this good fortune.? ” 

“ Oh, I wanted to talk to you,” said Kate. 
“ It seems as though you are the only one to 
whom I can come when I am troubled, and want 
to have the wrinkles all smoothed out for me. It 
always does me good to be here, for it rests me as 
no other place does. There seems to be some- 
thing so quiet and substantial and established 
about this great solid old house, and you your- 
self are always so serene and even and confident 
that there is a sense of protection that comes to 
me here which I do not feel elsewhere, and all my 
worries and doubts vanish when I talk to you. 
To-day I was nervous and worried in spite of my- 
self, and I could not throw it off there at the Wil- 
son home, so I asked Aunt Rachel to let me come 
and visit you, and to my surprise, she offered no 
objection. If you will allow me, I will stay until 
to-morrow.” 

“ My dear,” I said, “ I will be more than glad 
68 


“ WAYSIDE ” 


69 


to have you stay, and now let us cast all the an- 
noying thoughts out of our minds until after din- 
ner, for it is not well to carry our troubles to the 
table with us, any more than to carry them into 
our sleep. Let us play a little music together 
and sing one or two of our favorite songs, and take 
to our dining the cheerfulness which nature asks 
for, and then after dinner, if it be necessary, we 
will come here and unburden our souls to our 
hearts’ content.” 

So we sang and played until dinner was an- 
nounced, and we enjoyed a pleasant, happy, quiet 
meal together, just Kate and I, and I told her 
how pleasant it would be for me if I could have 
her bright and happy face opposite me always. 
Finally we were back again in the great living 
room, and drawing up our chairs before the blaz- 
ing fire, we sat in silence and content for some 
time, until Kate at last spoke. 

“ Uncle Jack,” she said, “ I do not think that I 
can stay at the Wilson home much longer, for I 
begin to feel like an intruder there. They are 
not really my uncle and aunt, you know, but only 
distant relatives, and I have no real claim upon 
them. I felt this when Aunt Rachel first asked 
me to come, but she pleaded so hard for me to 
take the place of the daughter which she had lost 
that I finally consented. I feel now that it would 
have been kinder to have left me in England, 
where I was making my own living and had hopes 
for the future. They are still very kind to me 


70 ‘‘ WAYSIDE ” 

at the Wilson home, and I suppose I ought not 
complain, but it seems to me lately that I can 
sense a different feeling toward me than at first, 
and especially in the case of their son William. I 
learned to-day that he is to be married soon and 
wants to bring his wife there, and they feel that 
it complicates matters somewhat because of my 
being there. Uncle Jack, I never did have a real 
home. My mother died before I was old enough 
to know her, and a relative of my father’s brought 
me up. My father provided for me while he lived, 
but after he died I went to work for myself.” 

“ Did your mother’s relatives live there.? ” I 
asked. 

“ No,” she said, “ my mother was an American, 
and was a widow when my father married her. 
Her first husband had been an actor, and she was 
singing in grand opera when my father met her.” 

“ What was her name.? ” 

“ Her name was Annette, and her first hus- 
band’s name was Barnes, but farther than that I 
know nothing about her. My father himself 
knew very little about her, and could tell me little 
except that she was very pretty, and a splendid 
singer.” 

“ Annette Barnes,” I said, “ and an American 
girl. Do you know if her first husband’s full, 
name was Morris Barnes ? ” 

“ No,” said Kate, “ I do not; but why do you 
ask.? ” 

“ My dear,” I said, “ my sister Annette eloped 


“ WAYSIDE ” 


71 


with an English actor named Morris Barnes, who 
later died in England, and we were told that my 
sister had died there also ; but we never heard of 
her marrying again. Could it be possible that, 
after all, you are my niece, my only sister’s 
child ? ” 

“ Oh, that would be beautiful,” said Kate ; 
“ too beautiful and good to be true, I am afraid, 
but how can we know.? I have no picture of her, 
and all that I know about her I have told you.” 

“ Wait a little, Kate, and let me think. I will 
tell you what I will do. Our company wants 
some one to go to England next month to look 
after some of its business there, and I will go my- 
self, and while there will investigate until I find 
out the truth. Let us keep this secret to our- 
selves until we are sure, but I believe that you are 
my sister’s daughter, and if so, your home and 
place is here at ‘ Wayside,’ your mother’s old 
home. Now let us rest content with things as 
they are at present, and you may be sure that I 
will use every effort to find the truth. Maybe 
that is the reason that we have been so drawn to 
each other; it is your mother’s blood calling to 
her brother to take care of her daughter.” 

“ Uncle Jack, what a strange world this is, and 
what curious things happen in it! It seems as 
though there must be some intelligent spirit or 
force which brings these things about, outside of 
our own wills. Maybe our souls have a connec- 
tion in some unseen way with a power which moves 


72 “ WAYSIDE ” 

them according to a plan divine and good. What 
is the soul, Uncle Jack.? I understand how you 
conceive it to be made and how it has evolved, but 
what is it in itself.? What is it like.? If we could 
see it, what would it look like.? ” 

“ Well, Kate, I do not conceive of the soul as 
a small, compact, definite thing which is located 
in some particular place in our bodies, but a force 
or spirit which permeates our bodies as God, the 
force and spirit, permeates the universe. Scien- 
tists tell us that permeating the visible physical 
body is an invisible body which is a counterpart 
in every particular of the one we can see. This 
is the body of sensation, and it is in this body 
that thought is engendered and operates, and 
through this body the nervous system acts. The 
refinement and development of this body makes 
thought possible, for it is composed of mental 
force and substance. In this body a central 
organization is developed, and self-conscious 
thought is at last accomplished. I conceive this 
body to be the soul, and this centralization and 
corporation is what enables it to hold together 
of itself after it leaves the visible physical body. 
Memory of a common life experience holds the 
organization together by the same law of attrac- 
tion which holds together the visible body. So 
the soul is the mental element of our body, held 
together by a central organization which enables 
it to persist after the disintegration of the visi- 
ble body at what we call death. In life after life 


“ WAYSIDE ” 


73 


this organization becomes more perfect and more 
strong, until at last immortality and eternal life 
are reached. Scientists also assure us that mat- 
ter or substance is capable of divisibility into so 
fine a condition, possessing so rapid a vibration, 
that it becomes invisible to our physical vision, 
and I conceive the soul to be composed of this in- 
visible material, which is matter in so fine a state 
that we cannot see it now, but it may be that some 
day man will develop the faculty of sight suffi- 
ciently to enable him to see this duplicate body or 
soul which is now invisible, just as men will some 
day be able to read each other’s thoughts without 
assistance from spoken words. All these things 
are among the possibilities of the future.” 

After a silence of some moments, during which 
Kate was very thoughtful, she said, 

“ I do not see why it is that I seem more will- 
ing to accept whatever you tell me, and am more 
able to believe it, than what any other person tells 
me. Your explanations seem so plain to me, and 
I can see how it could be as you say, while others 
talk about these things in set phrases which really 
mean nothing to me when I try to think them out 
afterwards.” 

Again silence came upon us, and I watched the 
light come and go upon Kate’s perfect face as the 
firelight touched it lovingly, for we were sitting 
without any light save the fire in the grate, and 
when the flame would leap up the light lingered 
caressingly in the masses of her wonderful hair. 


74 


« WAYSIDE ” 


so like the hair of the “ Only Girl,” who used so 
often to sit here beside me in the happy days of 
long ago. 

“Are there pictures in the coals, my dear.?” I 
said. 

“ Perhaps,” she answered, “ but just now there 
is a picture in my mind, so dear, so beautiful, that 
I fear it can never come true.” 

“ Yes, I can paint that picture for you, Kate, 
and I believe it will yet come to be. You see this 
old house at ‘ Wayside ’ which you love. You 
see a real Uncle Jack whom you also love, and 
you see, my dear, a younger face which you love 
more than all the rest. I know your secret, Kate, 
and I have no word to censure you, but there are 
lessons which Philip needs to learn before he takes 
upon himself the responsibility of the welfare and 
happiness of another. It is well for a man to 
be generous and unselfish and considerate for oth- 
ers, but there is also a duty which he owes to him- 
self and to society, to so provide for himself and 
guard against emergencies that he will not be a 
charge upon others, and will be able to care for 
those dependent upon him comfortably and rea- 
sonably. Philip has been somewhat careless here- 
tofore, giving away to others, — and sometimes to 
their hurt, — what he should have husbanded for 
his own use in time of need, but now that he has 
an incentive which he did not have before, I expect 
to see him change his ways and methods in this 
regard.” 


“ WAYSIDE ” 


75 


“ How did you know ? ” said Kate. 

“ I read it in your face,” I said, “ for I have 
become so used to reading a face like yours that 
I can translate its every expression ; but what 
about Paul and Harry.? ” 

“ Paul asked me yesterday, and when I told him 
it could not be, he wanted to argue the matter 
with me. He told me it might mean my soul’s 
salvation to say ‘ yes,’ and I think he meant that 
I would then be away from your influence. Mabel 
loves him, and she would make a far better minis- 
ter’s wife than I, for she is ready to believe any- 
thing he tells her, while I am not, and never could 
be. Has Philip ever written to you ? ” 

“ Yes, I received a letter from him yesterday, 
and he is well and likes his work; only he is lone- 
some for his friends here, but maybe he will out- 
grow that.” 

I did not show her the letter which reposed in 
my coat pocket, and which had been full of love 
for her, deeming it best to let her think soberly 
over this matter without too much encouragement 
at present, but after she had retired I took the 
letter from my pocket and read it over again. 

“ Dear Friend: 

“ I am sitting alone in my room to-night in Saint 
Louis, but my heart and my thoughts are back at 
‘ Wayside ’ with you and my other friends there. I 
am thinking that maybe Kate is there with you, for I 
love to think of her there rather than in the Wilson 
home in the city. It has always seemed to me more 


76 “ WAYSIDE ” 

appropriate that she be there with you, for I know 
that she loves you and that you love her, and I imag- 
ine her sitting by your side in that beautiful great 
room, and she is gazing into the glowing coals of the 
fire while you talk to her in the way she so dearly 
loves. As the days go by, my love for her is growing 
stronger and stronger, and its influence is changing 
my views of life and making me a better and more 
capable man. Never again can I be the unthinking, 
careless person of all those past yesterdays in which 
I was content to dream and idle away my time, tak- 
ing no particular interest in the strenuous life going 
on about me. There is now for me an object and 
an aim in life which I did not possess before, and I 
am trying my best to be a man and take a man’s place 
in the world. I am teaching every day, and my 
evenings I am devoting to musical composition. 
There is a melody ringing in my soul which I cannot 
reproduce in words or notes, but sometimes I fancy 
that I can catch it and bring it forth through my vio- 
lin. It is the story of my love for Kate, and you 
could understand it, I think, if you could hear it in 
the moments of my inspiration from it, for you, too, 
know what it is to love deeply, entirely, overwhelm- 
ingly. I am not allowing doubts to enter my mind, 
but am keeping in remembrance your words to me, 
that if I live right and do my best, some day my own 
will come to me.” 


CHAPTER VI 


I am talking to you from a beautiful little Eng- 
lish village to-night, Little Lady, and to-morrow 
I am to start for home, for my labors here are 
ended. I am filled with happiness, for Kate is 
my own niece, my sister’s only child, which fact 
has been proven to me beyond the shadow of a 
doubt. I found the relatives of Morris Barnes, 
and the house where he died, and in which my sis- 
ter lived at that time. The relatives told me of 
her return to the operatic stage, and of her mar- 
riage later to James Wilson, of the birth of her 
daughter, and her own death afterwards. In an- 
other part of England, where I am to-night, live 
the relatives of James Wilson, and here is the 
house where Kate was born, and where her mother 
died. Among her effects was a gold locket en- 
graved “ From Morris to Annette,” and contain- 
ing the pictures of my sister and Morris Barnes. 
They did not give this locket to Kate because 
they, being rigidly religious, did not want her to 
know or think much about her mother, who was a 
singer upon the public stage. I have visited her 
grave and strewn flowers upon it, as a last sad 
remembrance from a brother who would gladly 
take her to his arms if she were alive. 


78 


‘‘ WAYSIDE ” 


I have been in this village some days, and to- 
day I visited its chief object of interest to the 
traveler, the castle of Lord DeGarcy, which stands 
upon an eminence a short distance outside of the 
town. The DeGarcy estate is a large one, and 
the family is one of the oldest in England, some 
member of it having taken part in every important 
event in England’s history for more than a thou- 
sand years. The present Lord DeGarcy is a 
pleasant and genial gentleman, and having met 
him in the course of my work, he recognized me 
as I walked past his grounds and invited me to in- 
spect them. After showing me the various ob- 
jects of interest about the grounds themselves, he 
took me into the castle and showed me that por- 
tion of it which he said had been built, as far as 
could be known, in the eighth century. The cas- 
tle is an imposing pile of brick and stone, and 
has been changed, remodeled, and added to from 
time to time by its different occupants, with the 
exception of one wing or angle which has been 
kept b}" each succeeding owner as near as possible 
in its original condition. This ancient part con- 
sists of a high, square tower, and some five or six 
rooms, with small grated windows and iron doors. 
The foundation rests upon the rock, and the walls 
are solid stone and masonry. Lord DeGarcy 
pointed out where the old surrounding wall used 
to run outside the castle, and where the moat 
once was which lay beyond it. He told me some- 


« WAYSIDE ” 79 

thing of the history of the house and the stories 
of some of its owners. 

“ The DeGarcys have always been an active 
people,” said he, “ and our family history would 
almost be the history of England itself, for a 
DeGarcy has figured more or less prominently in 
every historical event of importance in England 
during the past thousand years. One story is 
told of a young Holland DeGarcy, who was the 
head of this branch of the house in the eleventh 
century. He, the story goes, was a happy, 
warm-hearted boy of twenty-two or three when 
his father died and he became the head of the 
house. He, like his father before him, was loved 
by his tenants and neighbors, and when he became 
converted by the preaching of Peter the Hermit, 
and was fired with religious zeal to join the cru- 
sade which was to rescue the sacred city and the 
sepulcher of the dead Christ from the hands of 
the infidels, he rode out from these castle walls one 
sunny morning, followed by three hundred armed 
retainers, the flower of the estate and the country- 
side. He went away, a laughing, happy, san- 
guine boy, to join the mighty army which was 
gathering for the conquest of the Turks. He 
came back at the end of four years, a hardened, 
cruel, bloodstained man, who ruled thenceforth 
with an iron hand and a merciless heart, until one 
day a peasant youth, whose sister Holland had 
wronged, stabbed him to death as he sat carous- 


80 “ WAYSIDE ” 

ing with his knights at his own banquet table. 
Somewhere in this old castle the tragedy oc- 
curred; it may be in the very room in which we 
now stand. 

“ He had learned his lessons of cruelty, of 
bloodshed, of oppression and of lust from the 
Christian followers of a gentle, forgiving and non- 
resisting Christ, the loving Man of Nazareth, 
whose creed was the Golden Rule. But the fol- 
lowers had taken their creed, their belief and their 
doctrine from the Old Testament, and they were 
strictly adhering to its precepts. They burned 
cities and destroyed homes. They murdered men 
in cold blood and in hot blood. They ravished 
and outraged and killed women. They took little 
children by the feet and dashed their brains out 
against the stones. They cut and maimed the 
horses which they could not use, and left them to 
slowly die in agony. They devastated the land 
wherever they went, and as far as lay in their 
power, left not a living thing in it. And yet they 
did nothing which God did not command Joshua 
and others to do, and nothing but what David, 
that beloved and anointed of God, prayed to be 
given the power to do. They had plenty of pre- 
cept and example in the Old Testament for their 
devil’s work, and each man thought in doing it 
he was doing the will of God, and would be blessed 
of God for the deed. 

“ In the Wars of the Roses, the DeGarcy of 
this estate wore the red rose of Lancaster until he 


“ WAYSIDE ” 


81 


was killed in battle, when the estate went to the 
next DeGarcy in line, who was a follower of York. 
The DeGarcy who held title here in the time of 
Charles First stood by his king, and fought val- 
iantly for the crown, but Cromwell’s victories 
meant his death and the giving of the estate to 
another DeGarcy of the same lineage, but who 
had been fortunate enough to fight on the Crom- 
well side.” 

While Lord DeGarcy had been talking, we had 
been standing in what must have been the banquet 
room of the ancient castle, and I had been vainly 
trying to remember what it was that made the 
old room look so familiar. Had I ever before 
seen a room like this, or where had I seen a pic- 
ture of such a room, — long and narrow, with 
walls of hewn stone, and low vaulted ceilings of 
solid masonry, two doors opening to the south, 
one larger door upon the north, and high narrow 
grated windows at each end, one of them facing 
the west, through which the sun suddenly 
streamed upon the stone floor.? Quickly it came 
back to me, — the room of my savage dream of 
the fight for the girl with Kate’s voice and eyes. 
I knew it now perfectly, and right there in that 
patch of sunlight I had fought and killed my last 
adversary in that wild dream of long ago. 

“ Is there any other story of a tragedy in this 
room.?” I said. 

“ There is a legend of a fight which occurred 
in the banquet hall of the old castle many years 


82 


“ WAYSIDE ” 


ago, and the room may have been this one. 
There was a feud between the DeGarcys and a 
neighboring lord, in which members of the two 
houses killed each other on sight, and the story 
goes that a son of this neighboring lord and a 
daughter of the DeGarcys fell in love with each 
other, and the young couple met one stormy 
afternoon in the deserted banquet hall, where 
they were caught by the girl’s father who came 
suddenly into the room. DeGarcy was a rough, 
fight-loving old chieftain who dearly loved 
bravery and strength, and he offered the young 
lover his life and the girl for a wife if he would 
fight then and there to the death several of his 
strongest warriors. The young man accepted 
the challenge and fought and killed all of his 
opponents, thereby winning the girl and binding 
together the two houses in a friendship which was 
never afterwards broken. 

“ In all of the wars which harassed England in 
all of the years of its authentic history, a De- 
Garcy has gone out from this castle to fight on 
one side or the other, and whenever one fell, there 
was always another ready to take his place, so 
that this building and this estate has never wanted 
for a DeGarcy owner and occupant. If the walls 
of this old castle could talk, what tales they could 
tell of love and war, of happiness and hardship. 
Do you wonder that I reverence this house and 
grounds when I remember the stirring scenes 
which have taken place here, and the kings and 


“ WAYSIDE ” 83 

queens and noble folk who have trod these walks 
and slept beneath these roofs? 

“ They tell a tale of a fair Catholic maiden 
who lived here, a daughter of the house, and who 
had a Protestant lover among the neighboring 
gentry, in those troublous times when Catholic 
killed Protestant for his belief, and Protestant 
murdered Catholic for the same reason. The 
young Protestant noble met the girl here one 
evening somewhere on the grounds, and was dis- 
covered by the girl’s father and some soldiers of 
the crown who chanced to be here. It is said 
they killed the young gallant here in the presence 
of the girl, and the lady queen who ruled Eng- 
land at that time applauded the deed, saying that 
if God was intending to torture and destroy these 
unbelievers any way some time, it was only doing 
his work to commence upon them here and now.” 

I walked back to my lodgings, silent and 
thoughtful. If the Bible was the literal Word 
of God, then as Lord DeGarcy said, he had given 
these commands to the captains of his special 
people, who had followed them out to the letter. 
Perfectly consistent was David, that licentious, 
cruel, lying, immoral friend of God, and quite 
properly did the crusaders follow these instruc- 
tions. Has God changed since those days, or has 
man changed as he grew in knowledge and kind- 
ness? The conception of God held by any man, 
or any race or tribe of men, coincides with their 
ideas of what God ought to be. If they are 


84 


“ WAYSIDE ” 


cruel, evil, immoral and revengeful, their God, 
as they think of him, will have those qualities. 
Each man builds his idea of God upon his ideal 
of what God should be, and those Old Testament 
writings were only men’s guess, colored by their 
own mental condition, of what God was like, and 
what he would say and do. I would rather think 
of the Bible as being what I fully believe it to 
be, the human conceptions of God and his ways 
as the mind of the writer conceived it. This 
makes reason to me, and makes the Bible a con- 
sistent and continuous story of God as man 
thought of him in the different ages of the world. 
There is absolutely no foundation for the theory 
of supernatural revelation except man’s supersti- 
tious belief in miracle and his desire to make of 
God a mystery. We must not forget that the 
Person we call God is a purely imaginary crea- 
tion, formed in our minds from baseless tradition 
and ancient superstition, and a desire to propi- 
tiate, or commune with, a power which we feel is 
greater than us, and of which we are afraid. We 
must also remember that the orthodox soul is an 
imaginary thing, and its existence cannot be 
demonstrated in fact. We realize that there is 
intelligent control of the universe, and we feel 
ourselves to be a part of, or akin to, the power 
which controls, but beyond that we theorize and 
guess. 

Now what of this old castle, and its stone- 
arched, gloomy banquet hall, and my strange 


“ WAYSIDE ” 


85 


wild dream at “ Wayside ”? What possible connec- 
tion could there be between them? And what is 
this half tangible consciousness which still haunts 
me, that the place has been at some time familiar 
to me in another way than in that dream, and 
that the dream was only a memory? Where had 
I seen it before that time, and what is this partly 
awakened sense which tells me that I ought to 
remember, and which holds a word, faint, indis- 
tinct, just beyond my conscious reach, — a word 
connected with this ancient room of masonry, — 
the key word of the picture which, if I could only 
remember it, would unlock the mystery? Try as 
I might, I could not call the thing to mind, and 
so I dismissed it from my thoughts, and occupied 
myself with other things. 

Several days afterward, when I was seated in 
a steamer chair upon the deck of a transatlantic 
liner, and was in the midst of a political discus- 
sion with a fellow passenger, there suddenly 
popped into my conscious mind from somewhere 
the one word “ Carcassonne,” the name of an old 
town in southwestern France, and following this 
the sentence, “ Of course there are ghosts in 
Carcassonne.” Then came back to me in detail 
a story related to me by a traveler and writer 
of an old castle which he had visited which con- 
tained a room like this, and which, so ran the 
legend, had been used in that early day, some 
hundreds of years ago, as a banquet and judg- 
ment hall, at one end of which the old knight sat 


86 


“ WAYSIDE ” 


in judgment, and at the opposite end, where the 
grated window was, men fought with swords or 
knives or clubs to settle their disputes, while 
along the wall on either side were ranged the 
men-at-arms and retainers who were witnesses. 
Then he told me the very story which Lord De- 
Garcy had repeated. My talk with the traveler 
had been about one month before my dream at 
“ Wayside,” and the tale had been so vividly told 
that a plain mental picture was made in my mind 
of this old room and its curious usage. 

Yes, I was now satisfied with the explanation 
of how I came to call forth the picture in my 
dream, but why should the word and story come 
back to me at this time, after I had seemingly 
dismissed it for several days, and come at a time 
when my mind was occupied with things entirely 
foreign to this subject.? It was as though I had 
sent a messenger back into the long picture gal- 
lery of my memory, hunting for this picture 
which was hanging there somewhere, and after 
a search the messenger had found it and dragged 
it forth at once, and had thrown it down at my 
feet, as though to say, “ Here is that picture 
which you sent for, good sir; my task is done.” 

Surely there are more things in this mental 
world than can be explained by any man’s philos- 
ophy; yet I believe that in the inner depths of 
our subconsciousness lies the memory of all our 
past experience, and when our mentality has been 
evolved to a strength sufficient to build a phys- 


‘‘ WAYSIDE ” 


87 


ical body fine enough and harmonious enough, we 
will be able to call forth into the conscious mind 
any incident of our past experience in any life 
which has made a strong impression upon us, 
and contains good enough to cause us happiness 
in remembrance. 


CHAPTER VII 


I am back once more in my home at ‘‘ Way- 
side,” Evelyn, and the steady turn of the wheel 
has ushered into existence the month of July. 
Kate has been installed here as my niece and 
ward, and there is a continual sunshine in the 
old house which it has not known since that dark 
day ten years ago, when to me the sun went sud- 
denly down at noon time and the birds stopped 
singing in the trees. Kate fits into the place 
provided for her perfectly, and it is very pleas- 
ant to find her happy face here upon my return 
from the city each day, and to have her opposite 
me at the dining table at every meal. Fate has 
been very kind to me in giving me this living 
picture of the “ Only Girl,” my wife, to cheer 
me and console me in the days which are to come. 

I had written Kate when I would be home, and 
asked her to meet me at “ Wayside,” and when I 
opened the door and walked into the room where 
she sat at the piano, playing and singing softly 
to herself, she heard me on the instant and came 
toward me quickly with outstretched hands and 
the light of happiness shining upon her beautiful 
face. I held out my arms to her and she came 
into them, while the tears of pure joy filled the 
limpid depths of her wonderful brown eyes. 

88 


“ WAYSIDE ” 89 

“ My dear,” I said, “ my little girl ; my own 
dear girl forevermore.” 

“ Oh, I am so glad,” she said ; “ so glad to 
think that you are really my Uncle Jack, and 
that I have a right to be here. It seems some- 
times too wonderful and beautiful to be true. I 
have a home now, a real home, for the first time 
in my life, and the dearest, strongest man to love 
me and protect me. I am too happy to talkj 
and I believe I must just cry.” 

And cry she did, but they were happy tears ; 
and I must confess to you. Little Lady, that my 
own eyes were not entirely dry. Afterwards I 
told her of my trip, and the proofs I had that 
she was my sister’s child, and I gave her the 
locket holding her mother’s picture. 

“ Now, Kate,” I said, “ if you wish you may 
occupy your mother’s old room upstairs, which 
is the room that later my wife and the baby occu- 
pied, and which has been left until now just as 
she left it on that last day of her life. Here the 
baby was born, and here her dear young life 
passed out into the Great Beyond. Here are my 
wife’s treasures and keepsakes, and the baby’s 
playthings and some of the clothes she wore. 
You may pack them away now if you like, for it 
seems to me that you alone, of all who have been 
here since that time, have the right to do so. It 
is a pleasant room, and I hope that you will be 
as happy there as 'was your counterpart, my 
dear dead wife.” 


90 


« WAYSIDE ” 


“Thank you, Uncle Jack. Now I know how 
much you love me, or you would not do this kind 
and graceful thing for me. I know that I will be 
very happy in that room and here with you, for 
it is the only perfect place in which I have ever 
been. 

“ I am glad to be here constantly for another 
reason also. Your talks with me have given me 
a vague unrest, a feeling that I am not yet upon 
sure ground concerning my religion. It seems 
as though you had taken away the faith I had, 
and I have not yet arrived at the certainty of 
knowledge which you possess. There is yet in 
my mind an unsatisfied longing to feel sure as 
you seem to feel, and I want you to explain to 
me until I either agree entirely with you, or can 
go back to my old faith, feeling certain of its 
truth.” 

“ Well, Kate, I can give you my reasons for 
believing as I do, and if they do not appeal to 
you, I will be glad to see you cast them aside. 
Do not try to believe anything because I say it 
is so, but only accept what seems reasonable and 
sensible to you. I am as reverent and certain 
in my belief in an all-wise Deity as you or any 
other person can be, and I base my belief upon 
the scientific knowledge of the world. Scientists 
are growing to recognize the fact that there is 
an infinite Intelligence permeating the universe, 
and that within us and around us there is a Life 
which they must acknowledge as supreme. There 


“ WAYSIDE ’’ 


91 


is no hypothesis which can explain the reason 
for evolution aside from an intelligent and omni- 
present supervision. No one knows more cer- 
tainly than the man of science that things do not 
happen in this world or life, but are controlled 
by fixed and unchangeable laws. If chance 
ruled there could be no science, for it is only by 
being able to trust in the constancy of the laws 
that any certainty of knowledge can be reached. 

“ I believe there will yet come a day when reli- 
gious belief will be founded upon strict scientific 
facts ; when it will agree with the sure and certain 
knowledge of the world as it is gained through 
the ordinary channels of the physical life. 
Then it will cease to be a thing apart and a 
theory of mystery and miracle. I believe that 
the coming religion will be a religion of common 
sense, and of natural, and not supernatural, at- 
tributes. It will be something which every man 
can understand as he understands all other things 
of life, by his reason and the faculties which he 
now has. 

“ Science declares that matter is immortal, 
that nothing is ever lost, that there is exactly 
the same amount of matter in the universe to-day 
as there was a million years ago, or as many 
years ago as we can think; also that there is the 
same amount of energy now as at any other point 
in time or eternity. Substance or energy never 
increases nor diminishes; only change occurs in 
form and arrangement. Forms change, but the 


92 « WAYSIDE ” 

amount of matter and force always remain the 
same. 

“ If the soul is a force, a material energy, — 
which it must be or it is nothing, — then science 
declares it to be immortal, provided it can hold 
its form after the dissolution of the physical body. 
The laws of attraction and cohesion constantly 
work more perfectly as atoms grow more like, 
more congenial, more harmonious, and the law 
acts with constantly increasing power to hold to- 
gether that form composed of like atoms which 
is harmonious with its environment. The soul 
is a spiritual force, which is a mental force, and it 
exists in a spiritual-mental environment, where 
harmony persists and inharmony disintegrates. 
Spirit is mental and eternal and immortal, there- 
fore, the soul is immortal when it has reached 
spiritual-mental perfection and strength and har- 
mony with the spiritual-mental environment. 

“ This is very close to a scientific demonstra- 
tion of the immortality of the soul, and some day 
science will actually demonstrate its reality. 
Science also declares that a perfect form, per- 
fectly adapted to a perfect environment, would 
never change, never dissolve, would live forever; 
therefore, the perfected spiritual soul in a spir- 
itual environment would have reached eternal life. 

“ Individual life experience builds a thing we 
call a memory, which is not lost, but persists in 
the substance in which it is registered when made. 
This memory is the mental consciousness, the soul. 


“ WAYSIDE ” 


and persists as a mental conscious form after the 
coarser physical body is dissolved. That part of 
memory which is harmonious with its spiritual 
environment lives forever, because a mutual, con- 
genial, harmonious life experience binds the sub- 
stance of the soul into a harmony which is im- 
mortal when it reaches harmony with its spiritual 
environment. 

“ In order to reach immortality the soul must 
have enough life experience to develop the ability 
to persist of itself, no matter how many lives or 
how many ages it requires. A soul can only be 
grown to immortality through individual life ex- 
perience. 

“ The result of the creative power is to evolve 
distinct individual mentalities into perfect units 
of the great Divine Mentality of the universe, 
each with a distinct individual memory of its own 
of the road which it has traveled to perfection, — 
each having learned the lessons of life in its own 
way, — each coming to see at last, that all the 
evil which it has experienced in the journey of 
development was caused by its own inharmony 
with the omnipresent laws of the All-Good. In 
no other way could a personal mentality be cre- 
ated which would know of itself good from evil, 
harmony from inharmony, right from wrong. It 
must work out its own salvation, free and untram- 
meled and uncoerced, and there must be no arbi- 
trary interference with its perfect freedom of 
choice. It must slowly learn to choose the right 


94 


‘‘ WAYSIDE ” 


from its own desire, and thus rise above evil and 
unhappiness into an immortality of harmony. 
The great even justice of creation cares naught 
for the details of the individual personal journey, 
but keeps on its level, undeviating way, knowing 
that at last all deserving, persistent mentalities 
will reach the goal of a common perfection. 
Deity knows that the sparrow falls, but it also 
knows that the fall is a necessary thing to teach 
it at last to fly, and if the lesson be not learned 
this time, then there will be other times in which 
to learn it. That it takes many lives in which to 
learn all of life’s lessons is no concern of the cre- 
ative power, for thus only is strength and wisdom 
gained to enable that mentality to reach eternal 
life. There is no problem of evil except as we 
make it ourselves in the struggle against the ever- 
lasting laws of continuance. We are not ma- 
chines, bound, crippled and predestined, but free 
mental agents working out our own destiny for 
and by ourselves. 

‘‘ Let us suppose that for our use and happi- 
ness we needed a perfect creature, and in some 
wonderful way the making, growing and develop- 
ing of that creature was in our own hands abso- 
lutely. Suppose that we had the power to start 
it on its way, and the ability to make all the con- 
ditions of its journey. Suppose that in order 
to develop the creature into what we wanted, it 
was necessary for it to learn all the lessons of life 
for itself. It must know, by actual experience. 


“ WAYSIDE ” 95 

sorrow and pain and hardship and tribulation, in 
order to develop the necessary strength to over- 
come these things and rise superior to them. 
Suppose we knew that all those which came 
through triumphant and developed that strength 
would be just the kind of perfect creature neces- 
sary for our happiness. Suppose we could watch 
the primary germs start, each building for itself 
a little shell or habitation, imperfect, inadequate 
and insufficient for its use for very long, but 
enough for its first needs. When it had out- 
grown this first habitation, it left it to build for 
itself a little better one, a little more adequate 
for its growing needs ; and thus in shell after 
shell, house after house, each one a little better, 
more developed than the preceding one, until at 
last we saw it struggle up through all the stages 
of development into the perfect habitation and 
the perfect creature we desired. 

“ Do you think that we would care how many 
trials and troubles it had on the way, if we knew 
that each one was a benefit to it, and gave it 
strength and wisdom and ability to become what 
it must become to do our service Do you think 
that we would grieve when we saw it lay down one 
body, one habitation, only to enter into another 
a little better adapted to its needs.? If we knew 
that nothing whatever could be lost, but whenever 
it appeared to fail one time, it always had another 
chance to try another time; if we knew the end 
from the beginning, do you think we would worry 


96 


“ WAYSIDE ” 


over the progress? If we knew that the perfect 
laws of growth and development were absolutely 
adequate and sufficient, and could not fail, do you 
think that we would interfere with the process ? ” 

“ Thank you. Uncle Jack,” said Kate. 
“ Every time you talk to me I understand a little 
better, and I know that living here with you I will 
in time grow into your certainty of faith, and now 
good night and pleasant dreams.” 

Pleasant dreams ! How could I have anything 
but pleasant dreams, with Kate’s fair face in my 
mind, and a happiness in my heart which was com- 
plete ? 

Very early the next morning I was awakened 
by some good fairy, when the first faint light of 
day was coming upon the earth. The soft wind 
was blowing in at the open window, laden with 
the spicy, pungent scents of the forest, and the 
low, sleepy twittering of the awakening birds was 
borne in upon the breeze. Filled with the sense 
of it, I jumped up and sat down upon the floor 
by the open window, and drank in long, deep 
breaths of that sweet, fragrant air. Slowly the 
light in the east increased and broadened and 
strengthened. Low lying along the horizon was 
a fringe of crimson glory, out of which rays of 
purple and amethyst and gold streamed upwards 
into the heavens. Slowly the shadows lifted and 
gave place to the joy of golden light; a few 
fleecy clouds in the blue sky were touched with the 
rainbow coloring; the gold and crimson bright- 


WAYSIDE ” 


97 


ened and deepened. Then the whole wide eastern 
heavens were suddenly illumined, and the shadows 
fled before it like a thousand frightened witches, 
and the miracle of the sunrise was again accom- 
plished before the wide-eyed, wondering vision of 
a boy, thank God, a man who was again a little 
boy, kneeling there upon the floor, as he had done 
in that same place long years before, in silent 
adoration before the beautiful, fragrant, joyous 
world upon which he gazed. The woods were sud- 
denly vocal with the songs of birds, and another 
day was ushered into time from eternity. With 
my face turned toward the rising sun, I silently 
thanked God for the new life which was beginning 
for me at “ Wayside,” and that the old house had 
again the only thing it lacked before to make it 
a perfect home — a loving woman’s presence. 


CHAPTER VIII 


Again the beautiful October days are here, 
Little Lady, and the woods are full of the wonder- 
ful coloring of autumn. The sunshine is like mol- 
ten gold, pure and liquid and soft as velvet. The 
crispy freshness of the air holds a tonic, sweet as 
the nectar of the gods, and all the world is radi- 
ant with the glory of the coming change. Octo- 
ber is and has always been to me, the most beau- 
tiful month of the year. The sky-blue mist en- 
veloping the hillsides, the purple and gold of the 
foliage, the mellow sunshine of the days, and the 
snappy sharpness of the nights bring a sense of 
joy to me which is only equaled, perhaps, by that 
little belated summer time which comes along in 
the latter part of November, and which we call 
Indian summer. Between now and then there is 
likely to be a touch of cold, a winter in miniature, 
some snow, probably, which does not last, and a 
few sharp winds which whisper of the real winter 
just behind, and then come along those strag- 
gling, lazy, indolent, summer days which have 
seemingly stopped somewhere to play by the road- 
side, and so have been detached from the real sum- 
mer procession. The main body of summer has 


« WAYSIDE ” 


99 


passed along sometime before, and is now out of 
sight on its journey with the birds to the south- 
land. 

Happy, careless, irresponsible days are those 
of Indian summer, loitering, sauntering by the 
roadside, cajoling here and there a mistaken fruit 
tree into jovial blossoms, and now and then a 
belated and misguided robin into thinking the real 
summer is not yet over, and that this beautiful 
time will last indefinitely. So the foolish bird 
sings gaily in the blossoming tree, and considers 
not the storms so soon to blow upon it. Cen- 
turies have told the tree and the bird that the sum- 
mer is really gone, and these days are but an echo 
which cannot last, but some there are which will 
not learn, or do not heed, and so later are caught 
by the icy blasts of the winter, for nature cares 
naught for the tree or the bird in their out-of- 
season frivolousness, but will freeze them both 
relentlessly if they vainly try to stand against 
her laws. 

But how can the tree help blossoming if its in- 
ternal conditions demand it, and how can the bird 
help singing if its heart is full of music.? And 
so I love these days of Indian summer. They 
are soft and warm and beautiful. Even the wind 
is gentle and kind and languorous. A purple 
haze is in the air, tempering the sunshine to our 
eyes, and softening the vision everywhere. A 
hush is over all. The strenuousness of blazing 
summer is past, the harvest is ended, and nature 


100 « WAYSIDE ” 

rests content, pausing for breath before the win- 
try storms which are so sure to come. 

And there is Indian summer in my soul to-day, 
begotten by these irrelevant, vagabond days, and 
I, too, want to stop and play by the roadside. 
When I pass a Sabbath or a holiday at “Way- 
side ” at this time of the year, it seems to me 
that I would like to stay here forever, and work 
no more, — Just to wander care-free in the fra- 
grant woods, to row or sail upon the silver waters 
of the lake, to listen to Kate’s clear voice in song, 
and to the sweet wailing tones of the violin ; to 
sit at evening time, or when the wind blows chill, 
by the generous fireplace, with the south window 
at my back, and read or talk or silently create 
half-dreaming pictures in the glowing coals be- 
fore me. It fills my soul with satisfaction for one 
day, but would it have the power to do that every 
day and every day forever? Ah, I am afraid that 
even this would lose its attractiveness if nothing 
ever came to break its ceaseless round of same- 
ness. For one occasional day this is good, and 
after it I go back to my work rested and refreshed, 
and labor cheerfully and diligently with a glad 
heart and a smiling face. And this I hope to do 
as long as kind fate will give me health and 
strength to accomplish, and these days will be all 
the more appreciated because of their rarity. 

It is good for man to work. It is in the scheme 
of things that if we would be happy, we must earn 
our happiness by effort. I fully believe that the 


“ WAYSIDE ” 


101 


man who does not work, or who does not like to 
work, is more an object of pity than of envy, and, 
I am not fully persuaded that the man who does 
not need to work in some manner for his daily 
bread is not out of harmony with the great cre- 
ative plan, which builds only through personal 
striving and accomplishment. What does the man 
who does not labor know about the luxury of rest, 
or what does he know about real joy who has not 
tasted sorrow or overcome obstacle by his own 
personal exertion.?^ If there ever will be a perfect 
life to live, either in this world or any other, it will 
be a life which holds the joy of effort and accom- 
plishment, the joy of going on. Personal achieve- 
ment gives us a sense of worthiness which we can 
secure in no other way, and that man who does not 
achieve for himself misses the very dearest thing 
in life. 

So when I seriously consider it, I know that 
part of the joy of this Indian summer time lies in 
the fact of its contrast to other days before and 
after, and the happiness of these occasional idle 
holidays is increased by the labor of other days. 
The wisdom of all the centuries has put its seal of 
approval on the institution of one day of rest in 
every seven, and of the holidays which are com- 
ing more and more to be observed. These periods 
of relaxation are the safety valves of life, and 
enable us to recoup losses and gather strength 
to labor pleasantly at other times, and I know 
that the pure joy of these days lies in the fact 


102 


“ WAYSIDE ” 


that behind me is the accomplishment of labor 
willingly performed, and before me lie the duties 
which are yet to be discharged. 

But this day of which I write is in October, and 
we have still before us in pleasant anticipation 
those Indian summer days I speak of, and between 
now and then, if nature departs not from her cus- 
tom, many perfect days of this most perfect 
month. To-night the wood fire is blazing upon 
the hearth, and Kate and I are before it, and I 
have been reading to her from a book which I have 
brought her for a birthday gift. To-day is her 
birthday, and last night as I sat here with her, I 
said, 

“ To-morrow, my dear, when I come from the 
city I will bring you a book, and we will read it 
together, just you and I. I have in mind just 
what kind of a book I will try to get, not a gift 
book, with flaming covers and picture leaves, 
but a book whose reading will stir our hearts and 
fix our minds upon the finer things of life. 

“ I will get a book writ by some one of whim- 
sical brain and quaint thought, who will tell us 
things which we have heard before indeed, but pre- 
sented now in a new and fanciful way, so that the 
light will strike old truths at a different angle and 
make them look like new to us. We will take the 
book to our favorite seat near the great, wide 
fireplace, and sit close together while I read to 
you. And when we are tired of the reading, my 


“ WAYSIDE ” 


103 


dear, I will close the page, and we will give our- 
selves over to the reveries which the reading has 
called forth, and let our fancy build pictures in 
the future of our hearts’ desire.” 

And as I said to her, it has come to pass, and 
we sit in front of the fire and dream, although her 
dreams and mine are not, and cannot be, alike, 
for mine are all of the yesterdays, and hers are 
of the great to-morrows. Therein lies the differ- 
ence between youth and age, for youth dreams' 
ever of the future, while age is full of the memory 
of the past. She sees in the coals the face of the 
man who is to come, while I see there the vision 
of the girl who was. We have much in harmony 
and in common, we two, for we are as congenial as 
age and youth can ever be, but in our dreams we 
are sometimes far apart, and it cannot be helped, 
for the loving scheme of life has made it so, and 
it will not be changed while time lasts. 

She is thinking of Philip, I doubt not, and won- 
dering if he still cares, and there rests in my 
pocket a letter from him which I have not shown 
her. It is a letter characteristic of the man who 
wrote it, a strange, partly fantastic letter, as 
some of his letters are, but telling of accomplish- 
ment, and an awakened sense of the beauty of life 
rightly lived. I read it last night after she had 
retired, and between the lines I could read of his 
strenuous efforts to achieve for her sake, and his 
sorrow for the wasted years before. Here is a 


104 “ WAYSIDE ” 

page of it, Little Lady, and who but a musician 
could have written it ! 

Dear Friend: 

“ My thoughts have been full of ‘ Wayside ’ all 
day, I think more than ordinarily so, because of a 
half-waking experience which I had last night. I had 
worked hard yesterday with teaching and composi- 
tion, and did not go to my room until late. I was very 
tired, and did not turn on the lights, but started a fire 
in the grate, and sitting down in my chair by the 
table, put my^head upon my outstretched arms and 
gave myself up to retrospect. 

“ Suddenly the mellow tones of a clock’s clear 
striking bell come to my half-dreaming senses plain 
and vibrant. It is midnight. The striking clock 
arouses me and I raise my head. The room is dark, 
save for the fitful flashes of the firelight across the 
floor and upon the walls. I am alone, alone with the 
past, which rises before me in mysterious, fantastic, 
phantom shapes. What moves in that dark corner 
over there, and what unseen creature is it which I 
hear breathing somewhere in the room? What goblin 
face is staring at me from the ceiling, and what weird 
eyes accuse me from the walls ? What are these 
things, and why do they oppress me so? Is that 
my heart pounding away there so heavily, and how 
can it move with all that weary weight upon it? 
Yes, I know you, goblin shapes, from out the dark 
corners of my past. You are my sins, my unforgot- 
ten sins, which are ever present ready to torment me. 
I am trying to forget, but you will not have it so. 
My careless, wasted life, those years of no endeavor 
which were given me to improve, and I did not. Oh, 


‘‘ WAYSIDE ” 


105 


if I could but go back_, and live those years again, 
and make some use of them; but it cannot be, and the 
hopeless shadows haunt me. 

“But hark! From out the depths of the silent 
night a whistle comes to my listening ear, a cheery, 
happy, human whistle, and a voice breaks out in song 
— just a bar and a snatch of melody. The fire 
flashes up in the grate, and the room is suddenly 
illumined. I look again. Not a hideous form, nor 
a weird shape, nor a goblin face in sight. The few 
words of song from the street yonder are ones she 
used to sing, and now she comes back to me, singing, 
and beautiful and happy. My friends return, and 
happy thoughts fill the space where shadows lurked 
before. Her beautiful face is smiling at me from 
a picture upon the wall which a ray of firelight 
touches tenderly, and your kindly words of cheer are 
sounding in my consciousness. Keep heart, you say, 
and your own will surely come to you. I am alone 
no longer with the shadows, but surrounded by the 
jovial firelight and the visions of happiness yet to 
come. In the air are smiles and happy faces, in the 
coals are dancing sunbeams, and fairies dressed in 
gold and spangles and glad array. Outside the wind 
may blow, but in my thought is that musical whistle 
and the clear voice raised in song. 

“ There are beautiful pictures in the glowing coals, 
and beside me is a faint soft rustle, like the folding 
of a wing. Dear Kate, your presence now, as ever, 
drives away the shadows, and I have an indefinable 
feeling that I am alone no longer, but protected by 
an influence which I can sense but cannot see. I won- 
der if I am.” 


106 “ WAYSIDE ” 

I refold the letter and replace it in my pocket, 
and busy myself in contemplation of what the 
future may bring to these two who are so dear 
to me. 

Suddenly I am the possessor of untold wealth, 
and am also the owner of thousands of acres of 
land. I have unlimited power and my laws are 
obeyed implicitly throughout every acre of my 
vast domain. There is a multitude of people liv- 
ing in this kingdom of mine, and every one has per- 
fect health and happiness. There are schools and 
churches and public libraries and baths and swim- 
ming pools. There are many small factories and 
numerous little shops for the interchange of com- 
modities. There are good roads and many pleas- 
ant walks. There are small farms and innumer- 
able gardens, where flowers bloom and vegetables 
grow in profusion. There are horses and carts 
and sheep and lowing kine. 

Over the great entrance gateway is this stern 
demand : “ Let all who enter here leave care be- 

hind,” and a vigilant watchman stands guard 
there, armed with an infernal machine which ex- 
plodes the tires upon every automobile which seeks 
to enter, and leaves its owner stranded and pro- 
fane outside the walls. Electric lights we do not 
have, for we do not need them, and steam-heated 
buildings are unknown. No jangling telephone 
bell irritates the nerves of my people, and all the 
luxuries of modern invention are left to the world 
outside. The simple life is lived here, free from 


“ WAYSIDE ” 


107 


care and worry and undue haste, and contentment 
rules, with every person as rich as his neighbor in 
health and strength and happiness and all that 
goes to make life most dear. 

There are none but clean and honest people in 
this land of mine, because all are wise and under- 
stand the laws, obeying them from choice, and not 
any from compulsion. Sickness is unknown here, 
and our simple lives are lived close to nature and 
her beneficent, healing ways. Only friends abide 
here, and every man recognizes every other man 
as brother and congenial spirit. We walk and 
work and dance and sing, and live in the beautiful 
freedom of the out-of-doors. “ Live right ” is 
the motto of every soul in this kingdom of happi- 
ness, and no soul disobeys. Fear does not exist 
here, for love has banished it, and we pass un- 
harmed through the summer’s heat, and walk un- 
scathed through the pelting rain. Whatever 
storms kind nature sends us are recognized as nec- 
essary things in the economy of life, for we know 
that in it and around it is the controlling power 
of divine Love, and every man goes on about his 
duties, cheerful and serene and unafraid. 

This kingdom of mine has existed for, lo, these 
thousands of years, and never yet has a law failed 
or changed in its perfect operation. Souls come 
and go, some staying many years, and some but 
few; but although we rejoice to see them come, 
we do not grieve to see them go. We know that 
those who go will surely return in time, for an ir- 


108 “ WAYSIDE ” 

resistible desire has been bom in them which will 
surely draw them back. It may be that upon 
their return we will not recognize them as the 
same souls we knew and loved before, because a 
change has taken place in their appearance, but 
we will know they are congenial, friendly souls, 
or they would not be here, for none other enters 
this land of pure content. 

And so we go and come, and go and come again, 
and each time find this place more perfect than 
before. Every person works, for it is the law 
that no one may live here in idleness or from the 
fruits of another’s labor. You can find no half- 
breathing people in this fair country, nor any 
whose nervous systems are out of adjustment, and 
there are no slaves to appetite or to desire or to 
King Luxury, the most inexorable tyrant of them 
all. Every person learns in infancy, both from 
precept and example, the necessity of personal 
knowledge of personal needs, and the fact that 
each must fit himself to his place in life by his own 
efforts. 

Mankind may some day grow to that mental 
strength and knowledge which will enable him to 
find happiness and health and peace while still in 
the possession of the many luxuries of these later 
days, but we know that he has not yet arrived at 
that condition, and so we are happy in the simple 
life. Before each soul is placed the divine com- 
mand, “ Choose this day whom ye shall serve,” — 
either the complicated, complex and nerve-destroy- 


“ WAYSIDE ” 


109 


ing life of modern luxury, or the simple, happy 
life close to nature’s heart, — and upon its choice 
depends its destiny. If it chooses luxury, it must 
go outside of my domain to find it, but if it chooses 
health and happiness and peace and brotherhood, 
we have them here. 

The name of this most desirable estate of mine 
is not emblazoned on any gorgeous sign over the 
entrance gate, but many small signs there are in 
all parts of the world telling of it, and many there 
be who try to find it, but they travel a road which 
does not lead this way. I suppose if some of them 
should by any chance arrive here, they would at 
once begin to complain of the accommodations and 
they would then be obliged to go elsewhere. 
There are plenty of children here; in fact, more 
children than grown-up people, and it seems to me 
that — 

“ Wake up. Uncle Jack,” said Kate’s voice in 
my ear, and a dear hand is laid upon my shoulder. 
I open my eyes to find myself sitting in my easy 
chair before the fire, and my dream of that fair 
country — which I think will turn out to be 
heaven when I find it — was over for that time. 

“ It was too bad to disturb you. Uncle Jack, 
but you looked so smiling in your sleep that I 
wanted you to wake up and tell me about it. Did 
you dream that you were a millionaire, or a hero, 
or had you suddenly grown famous from the do- 
ing of some great deed, and were you just listen- 
ing to the plaudits of the crowd, or were the an- 


110 


“ WAYSIDE ” 


gels whispering to you again, as I believe they 
really do sometimes ? ” 

“ No, my dear, I did not dream of any great 
personal accomplishment, but I did have a curious 
vision of happiness which came from simple and 
honest living. I do not believe that real happi- 
ness comes from the great things so much as from 
the little things of life, the ordinary, every-day 
duties and joys and incidents. If we live as we 
should live, we can count it all joy, whatever 
comes to us, and sometimes the most uneventful 
life is the most really successful one. 

“ Always remember this, my dear : success can- 
not be measured in great deeds or much riches. 
I hold that person to be successful who has lived 
cleanly, honestly, healthily and modestly ; who has 
labored cheerfully, continuously and willingly ; 
who has provided reasonably against old age and 
want and the exigencies of accident ; who has 
spread the gospel of sunshine and cheerfulness and 
usefulness; who has recognized the beauty of the 
universe in star and plant and flower, in all animal 
life, and in every human soul ; who has grown men- 
tally in harmony with the good in the great 
scheme of life, and who has made progress toward 
that kingdom of strong and valiant souls which 
shall one day inherit the harmony and the beauty 
and the happiness of the loving divine plan.” 


CHAPTER IX 


Again there are gathered in the living room at 
“ Wayside ” my company of friends, Charles and 
Robert, with Harry and Mabel and Kate. We 
have had an evening of song and story, and now 
the talk has drifted into religious subjects, as it 
is apt to do here. Harry has just said to Rob- 
ert, 

“ Suppose a man who had never heard of our 
religion should ask you why we base our belief 
upon the supernatural inspiration of the Bible, 
and request you to tell him how the Bible came to 
be ; what would you answer him ? ” 

“ If I wished to tell him the whole truth,” said 
Robert, “ I should answer him something like this : 
After the great Roman Emperor Constantine had 
been converted to the Christian faith, and it was 
desired to give that faith official recognition, a 
convention was called at Nicea, where delegates 
from the different scattered bodies of believers met 
to effect a church organization, and decide upon 
what teachings should be accepted, and what 
manuscripts should be chosen as official church 
doctrines. The faith of these Christians was 
founded upon the life and words and deeds of a 
Great Teacher who had risen in Galilee some hun- 
111 


112 


“ WAYSIDE ” 


dreds of years before, and who for three years had 
taught a new faith, and proclaimed a new law. 
He made many converts among the people, and 
years after his death numerous persons wrote 
manuscripts purporting to contain a record of his 
deeds and sayings, which up to that time had been 
verbally handed down. A great pile of these 
manuscripts was gathered together at this con- 
vention at Nicea, and from them the delegates pro- 
ceeded to select what suited their purpose. This 
convention was a riotous affair. Oaths were ut- 
tered and blows were struck before a majority 
could agree upon what manuscript to accept and 
what to reject. Finally a list was adopted, and 
from this list comes the book we call the Bible. 

“ The Emperor Constantine caused a new cal- 
endar to be made dating from the time, as near 
as could be arrived at, of the birth of this 
Teacher of Galilee, and by this calendar the con- 
vention at Nicea was held in the year 325 after 
the Great Teacher’s birth. Now, there was at 
that time no such thing as vowel letters, no such 
thing as punctuation marks, and no such thing as 
capital letters. The manuscripts all consisted of 
rows of consonant letters strung together contin- 
uously from right to left across the sheet, with no 
divisions between the letters. Later, as these 
original manuscripts were worn out or became mu- 
tilated, copies were made by copyists, and the 
original manuscript was destroyed. Finally, 
after the invention of vowels and capitals and 


‘‘ WAYSIDE ” 


113 


punctuation marks, these manuscripts were tran- 
scribed into words and sentences, and later were 
translated into different languages. 

“No one knows how many times these writings 
were copied upon new manuscript, or by whom or 
when the work was done. All that we do know is 
that for one thousand years after this convention 
at Nicea the church was the sole custodian of 
these writings, and that no manuscript is now in 
existence which was made earlier than 700 years 
after the date of the beginning of the new calen- 
dar. No one knew then, and no one knows now, 
who wrote the original manuscripts, or at what 
time or where they were written. This is the ori- 
gin of the book which orthodoxy now claims is 
the literally inspired Word of God, and this is 
the foundation upon which the claim rests.” 

“ Well, it does not seem to me,” said Harry, 
“ that your argument would prove very convinc- 
ing to the outsider of the real supernatural qual- 
ity of our Scripture, and I suppose that is the 
reason why ministers who know never mention 
these things to their congregations, for the world 
may not be ready yet for this kind of knowledge. 
I have often wondered why it was that there were 
no books in the library here at ‘Wayside’ bear- 
ing upon religious subjects except those written 
by Bible scholars and friends to the orthodox 
creed. Considering the liberal views of its owner, 
I should suppose that he would want to read the 
infidel side also.” 


114 


“ WAYSIDE ” 


“ No,” I said, “ I have never read infidel books, 
for I perfectly agree with that passage of Scrip- 
ture which declares that ‘ it is only the fool who 
says in his heart there is no God.’ How any man 
can live in this beautiful world, and see before him 
and on every side the wonderful processes of na- 
ture, and not feel the presence of nature’s God; 
how he can read the remarkable discoveries of re- 
cent science, and not see the overwhelming evi- 
dence of method and order and harmony, and the 
presence of intelligent purpose in creation, I fail 
utterly to comprehend. 

“ There lives no man more willing to bow his 
reverential head in adoration before the omni- 
presence of the Almighty than I, and no amount 
of argument could shake my faith in the reality of 
an infinite Deity, which doeth all things well. 
Through all my senses the conviction comes home 
to my soul, and I feel the pressure of the infinite 
Being upon my own being, and my faith is born of 
certainty. 

“ It is only with man-made theology that I dis- 
agree. The underlying basic facts of God and 
the human soul, of salvation and the immortal life, 
I fully believe in, and am as confident of as any 
man can be. My faith is not a matter of or- 
dinary volition with me, and unless a thing looks 
reasonable to me, and I can conceive it, I cannot 
say that I believe it. I am glad to say that I do 
not possess a simple faith, for simple faith to my 


“ WAYSIDE ” 


115 


mind is but another name for simple credulity. 

“ If I told you that I went out into the street 
this morning and flapped my arms and flew up into 
the air and away for a hundred miles and back in 
ten minutes’ time, and you believed me, that would 
be simple faith, also credulity. If I told that 
story to a child, and it believed me, you would say 
that it believed because of its undeveloped mental 
powers and its ignorance of the common laws of 
life. If a grown person believed it, we would say 
that that person’s mind was weak and not capable 
of good judgment, and yet in all cases belief in 
this impossible thing would be a simple faith in 
my truthfulness. Now, why not apply this same 
reasoning to every impossible story which is told 
us, no matter by whom, for all stories or theories 
come to us through the medium of some other 
human being.? 

“ I base my personal belief upon the knowledge 
that it fits the facts of life as far as I know them, 
and makes absolute justice in every instance. I 
believe that the infinite divisibility of matter is a 
scientific fact; that evolution of the physical form 
is a scientific fact; that evolution of the mental 
into a central self-consciousness is a scientific fact ; 
that the law of attraction of congenial atoms is 
a scientific fact; that the immanence and control 
of mind in matter is a scientific fact; that the 
presence of purpose in creation is a plain and 
certain fact of nature, and that the attraction of 


116 “WAYSIDE” 

the persisting consciousness to a congenial en- 
vironment is a reasonable thing, and there is no 
reason to doubt its being a fact. 

“ When I tell of the things which I believe, my 
orthodox brother is ready to receive me into fel- 
lowship, but when I tell him of the things which I 
do not believe, he is ready to show me the door. 
Yet I suppose that if my orthodox brother and 
myself were to sit down together and calmly com- 
pare our theories of life, we would find that we 
were not so very far apart, after all, and that in 
the essential things we were in agreement. 

“We both believe that there is an infinite, in- 
telligent, creative, and controlling Power in the 
universe, which is omnipresent, omnipotent, and 
omniscient ; which has created all things ; and 
which governs all things ; and which we both desig- 
nate as God. He believes that this God is a Per- 
son, a great infinite Man, who resides in some par- 
ticular place away from this world, but comes 
here once in a while to regulate matters when they 
go wrong. He believes that God radiates his in- 
fluence from a central Presence, which he will some 
day see and know. I believe that this omnipresent 
creating and guiding Power is not centralized nor 
limited at any point into a manlike body, but is 
universal, continuous and immanent in the world 
and universe. I cannot believe in the manlike 
body, because I cannot conceive of God having 
limitations, which a body would necessitate. 

“We both believe that there is a God-created 


“ WAYSIDE ” 


117 


something in the being of man which survives 
death and the dissolution of the visible, physical 
body. He believes that this something is an in- 
visible and inconceivable thing, which is created 
suddenly and put into each new body by an arbi- 
trary fiat of God, and taken out again suddenly, 
at death, in the same way. I believe that this 
something is grown and developed in the physical 
body by the evolving and growing processes of 
God, and that when one physical body is disinte- 
grated, it is attracted into another, and another, 
until it has at length grown into the strength nec- 
essary for immortality. 

“We both believe that this continuing some- 
thing retains its identity and its memory after it 
leaves the physical body. He believes that in 
some mysterious and unthinkable manner this 
something goes direct to eternal happiness or 
eternal sorrow in some way and place which he 
cannot comprehend. I believe that this some- 
thing does not go to some unthinkable place, but 
comes back into birth in this life as it is, with the 
good or evil inclinations or propensities which it 
has developed here, and it thus has another chance 
to grow into harmony with its Creator in the 
same kind of life in which all its growth has been 
made. 

“ We both believe in the forgiveness of sin, or 
the doing away of inharmony. He believes that 
this is a sudden operation, performed in some mi- 
raculous and inconceivable manner by arbitrary 


118 


“ WAYSIDE ” 


fiat. I believe that forgiveness can only come 
gradually, through growth and development into 
harmony with the divine environment. 

“We both believe in immortality. He believes 
that it is handed out suddenly by arbitrary fiat. 
I believe that it is grown into by steady and con- 
tinuous development. 

“ We both believe that the persisting something 
is provided with some kind of a body after it 
leaves the physical one at death. He believes it 
will be some strange kind of a body which he can- 
not describe or conceive. I believe that it will be 
just the same sort of a physical body which it 
knows now, in which it has grown and developed, 
and in which it has had all its life experience. 

“ We both believe that right living and right 
thinking bring salvation. He believes also in the 
necessity of a number of rites and ceremonies, and 
the necessity of belief in certain miraculous events 
and happenings. I fail to see the importance of 
any one of these things. My belief is that we 
have no more reason to go outside of our knowl- 
edge in these matters than in any other. We 
have no reason to declare these things out of ad- 
justment with all the laws as we know them and 
see them working before our eyes every day. We 
should fit our theory of the things beyond to the 
facts about things as we know them now. There 
is no reason to believe that God is not continuous, 
constant and unchangeable. 

“ These wonder tales and miracles were no 


“ WAYSIDE ” 


119 


doubt necessary in the early ages of mental de- 
velopment, but persisting humanity must outgrow 
them, as it must outgrow a great many other be- 
liefs and superstitions which have become incredi- 
ble in the light of advancing revelation. We do 
not believe to-day that the world is flat, and that 
the sun is pulled across it once in every twenty- 
four hours for the sole purpose of giving it light. 
There are a great many other things which were 
believed in the ancient days which to-day we know 
are not true, and we are being forced to change 
our theories to fit our growing knowledge of the 
facts. So it must be with all remaining supersti- 
tion and also with all belief in miracles in the sense 
that God’s unchangeable laws were ever changed, 
in any instance, to fit the convenience of any hu- 
man being. The day of miracle is now as much as 
it ever was, and there are just as many miracles 
being performed to-day before our very eyes as 
were ever performed in the history of the world. 

“ I do not believe that anything is ever handed 
to us arbitrarily from the outside, but that all 
that comes to us comes under the law, in the regu- 
lar order of cause and effect. We must both come 
to realize that our health, our happiness and our 
destiny are in our own hands, and governed by 
laws which we can see and understand. If we at- 
tain the mental condition of happiness in this life, 
by what process of reasoning can we arrive at 
the conclusion that it will be taken away from us 
after we leave the physical and dwell in a mental 


mo 


“ WAYSIDE 


world? Why will it be taken away simply be- 
cause we have not been able to believe some mys- 
terious and unthinkable thing which some other 
man, with no better authority than our own, has 
told us we must believe ? 

“ If anything persists after death, it must of 
necessity be a mental thing, and it must of neces- 
sity preserve its memory; otherwise it would not 
be we, nor anything that we could conceive. If 
the mentality which persists has pleasant memo- 
ries of this life and nothing else, how will it be 
possible to make it unhappy? There is no reason 
for believing that there is something weird, fan- 
tastic, inconceivable and different which is in the 
body now, but we know nothing of it, and which 
will last over out of the body in some unthinkable 
way, and be done something to, good or bad, by 
some unknown Person in some inconceivable man- 
ner, continually forever. It does not make sense. 

“ We both believe in inspiration and revelation. 
He believes that God picked out certain favorite 
individuals some thousands of years ago, and in a 
supernatural and miraculous manner revealed to 
them his truths, and that then inspiration and 
revelation ceased for all time. I believe that God 
never has had any favorites in that sense of the 
word, but that he has revealed his truth to every 
living soul, according to its ability to perceive and 
receive. I believe that the voice of God is con- 
tinuous, and has been through all time, and that 
revelation is a continuing process.” 


“ WAYSIDE ” 


121 


“ Well, I must confess,” said Robert, “ that 
your theory has a great attraction for me, not 
only because it seems reasonable, but because the 
after life, as you picture it, would be to me most 
desirable. I have often had in my secret con- 
sciousness a serious doubt as to whether the or- 
thodox immortality would, after all, prove to be 
a desirable thing. Unless I lose after this death- 
change my present inclinations and desires, and 
also lose the memory of some of my present friends 
and companions whom I now love, but who under 
the orthodox theory could not possibly be saved, 
I know that I could not be happy continually in 
any place where I must lose all hope for them. 
Neither could I be eternally happy in eternal idle- 
ness. 

“ But if I feel that I am to live again the life 
that I know, under whatever just conditions I 
have made for myself, then I have a very decided 
incentive to live right now, and if I do this, I can 
look forward to a life from which all mystery 
and doubt and superstition has been eliminated, 
and where only even level justice follows me 
through all eternity, and where there is a cer- 
tainty of hope for every soul with perfect confi- 
dence and trust. 

“ I am persuaded that the tendency is to forget 
the bad and remember the good as we grow better 
and stronger, and in this way a perfect salvation 
from evil may come to us in that good time when 
evil causes cease in our personal lives, for we will 


122 


‘‘ WAYSIDE ” 


have then only happy memories. We receive a 
hint of this in this life, for as the years pass, the 
troubles and trials and sorrows of past life grad- 
ually fade away and disappear, while the good 
and the pleasure remain with us always. We can 
make of this life a romantic adventure if we un- 
derstand and obey the laws, and a life without 
romance would be a life without interest. This 
life is a life of sentiment, and to those who think 
most deeply is sentiment most dear. It is to 
those happy incidents of life into which romance 
and sentiment have entered that we love best to 
turn for comfort and consolation in our hours of 
retrospect, and that man is poor indeed to whom 
romance has not come at some period in his life.” 

“ Yes,” said Charles, “ that is so, and romance 
and sentiment are but twin sisters going down 
life’s pathway hand in hand, for when you find 
one you are sure to find the other. 

“ To-day, in my reading, I came across this 
remark : ‘ But believe me, there is nothing after 

all more fairly distributed than romance. God 
has been generous of it, and there are few who 
sometime, for a moment, have not been touched 
with the wand, — few of us, commonplace, tired 
and sordid, who have not somewhere within us a 
memory glowing pale, like the petals of a rose.’ 
And as I look down into the secret chambers of 
my heart, where I keep my treasures safe from 
prying eyes, I find its confirmation. My friends, 
shall I lift the veil for a moment, and give you a 


“ WAYSIDE ” 


123 


glimpse into one of these holy places from which I 
draw the inspiration of what good is in me? 

“ Just back yonder in that great yesterday, 
when I was young and full of the dreams of youth, 
I lived for a time in the northern pine woods, and 
was a timber cruiser, as they were called, a 
searcher after the best pine for lumbering pur- 
poses. One day I heard of a valuable tract of 
timber about forty miles ‘ down shore,’ and I knew 
that the easiest and quickest way to reach it was 
by boat to a point on the lake as near as possible, 
and then a pack trip inland. It was also said 
that one of the millionaire lumbermen of the 
northwest was after it, and if he or his men 
reached it first I had no chance in the race. So I 
fitted out my small sailboat and started at once, 
alone, in an effort to be the first upon the scene. 

“ Starting early in the morning, with favoring 
wind and fortune, I reached in good time my des- 
tination upon the lake, and pulling my boat into 
a safe anchorage, I swung my pack upon my back 
and started out, intending to pass the night in an 
old abandoned lumber camp I knew was near. 
As I pushed my way steadily through the dense 
underbrush, I came suddenly out into a little 
clearing, and a strange vision met my astonished 
eyes. Seated upon a fallen tree, in an attitude 
of utter dejection, was a young lady, and my first 
glance showed me by her dress, her attitude, and 
that indescribable something which surrounds the 
cultured that she belonged to wealth and plenty 


“ WAYSIDE ” 


124 

and prosperity. Her hands covered her face, and 
she was crying bitterly. 

“ As I gazed at her a moment in silence, almost 
afraid to speak for fear the vision would vanish 
into thin air, she raised her head and saw me. A 
smile like sunshine broke instantly through the 
rain of tears and with a sobbing catch in her voice 
she said, 

“ ‘ Oh, I’m so glad. It’s all right now, isn’t 
it.?’- 

“ ‘ Well, I hope so,’ I said, ‘ but what was the 
trouble a moment ago.? ’ 

“ ‘ Why, I was lost and tired and wet and cold 
and hungry.’ 

“ ‘ Is that all? ’ I said. ‘ Well, you are found, 
and the rest of it can soon be fixed, but how came 
you here? ’ 

“ ‘ I am Miss , and my father’s yacht is 

down there somewhere in a little bay, and he and 
his men are out looking at pine land, and I wan- 
dered away for a walk and got lost, and it com- 
menced to get dark, and I was awfully afraid until 
you came.’ 

“ As she looked at me, smiling through her 
tears, I thought she was the most beautiful being 
I bad ever seen, and I knew that ber father was 
the millionaire lumberman who was after my land, 
and I also knew that the little bay she spoke of 
was only a few rods away, just beyond the hill. 
Should I take ber there at once, or should I build 
a fire and get supper, and see what manner of 


“ WAYSIDE ” 


125 


angel this was which the gods had sent me. The 
charm of her presence and her evident trust in me 
were too strong for me to resist, and throwing my 
pack upon the ground, I started in to build a 
fire, and make her as comfortable as possible for 
the present. I told her that we could not very 
well reach the boat right away, but that I knew 
where it was, and as soon as she was rested and 
warmed and dry, I would take her there. 

“ ‘ All right,’ she said, and as I busied myself 
with preparations for her comfort, we spoke but 
little. 

“ Almost unconsciously I found myself prepar- 
ing two beds of fragrant pine boughs, instead of 
one, and gradually the conviction came to me that 
we would not find the yacht that night, but she 
should be as safe and unafraid there in the silent 
forest with me as though in her father’s house and 
care. 

“No bed ever made by man is more downy, 
fragrant or sleep producing than a properly made 
one of pine boughs, and I thought thankfully 
that I had with me two sets of blankets instead of 
one, as sometimes, and that one pair were the 
beautiful red ones of which I was so proud, also 
that my wood suit was new, and that my provi- 
sions were plentiful and fresh. After the beds 
were prepared and the blankets thrown upon them 
(for these things must be done before the dark 
catches you in the deep woods), I set about pre- 
paring supper — for two. 


126 


« WAYSIDE ” 


“ The girl had watched mj work with eager in- 
terest, occasionally asking some question, and 
laughing a glad little rippling laugh, like the trill 
of a bird, as she grew warm and dry, and comfort- 
able. Presently supper was ready, and we ate 
it together, as happy and care-free as two chil- 
dren, which indeed we were. She told me of her 
home, and of this trip and others like it, which she 
enjoyed the most of anything in life. She was in 
love with the outdoors, as I was, and she was as 
pure and innocent as God’s daughters ought of 
right to be. I told her of my life and hopes and 
aims, of what I hoped to do, and what I hoped to 
be. She told me she was sure that I would suc- 
ceed. 

“ After supper I told her that we could not 
find the boat that night but that she need not be 
afraid, for I would take care of her. 

“ ‘ Afraid,’ she said, ‘ why, it never entered my 
mind to fear after you came.’ 

“ So I told her that I would go down to the 
little stream near by, and get some water, and 
while I was gone for her to go to bed in the red 
blankets, and when she was ready, to call, and I 
would come. 

“ At her call I came back, and sitting there in 
the firelight, we talked until far into the night. 
At last she asked me by what name my friends 
called me. 

“ ‘ Well,’ I said, ‘ my acquaintances call me 


“ WAYSIDE ” 


127 


Charles, my friends call me Charlie, and a very 
few who love me best call me Chum.’ 

“ She said, ‘ My name is Alice, my friends call 
me Allie, and some few who love me call me Dear.’ 

“ ‘ Well, good night. Dear,’ I said, and hesitat- 
ing a moment, 

“ ‘ Good night. Chum,’ she said, and buried her 
face from my sight. 

“ Ah, me ! I remember, as though it were yes- 
terday, the thrill which came over me as she said 
those words, and as I laid down to sleep, I regis- 
tered a vow to be worthy of her confidence and 
trust. 

“ Early in the morning I arose, and replenish- 
ing the fire, I went again to the small river for 
my morning liquid devotions. When I returned 
she was up and sitting by the fire, and she greeted 
me cheerily. After breakfast was eaten, she 
helped me take care of the dishes and pack the 
pack, taking a lively interest in it all. I then an- 
nounced that we would find her father’s boat. 

“ Leaving the pack and blankets where they 
were, we started out, but first away from the boat 
instead of toward it. As we walked slowly along 
together, it may be that I lingered just a little at 
those moments when I had to take her hand to 
help her over some fallen tree, or place my ex- 
tended arm near her to ward off some too familiar 
branch. At last, by a circuitous route, we 
reached a little open space, and there just below 


128 


“ WAYSIDE ” 


us was the bay, and her father’s yacht, at anchor. 

“ ‘ Now, good-bye. Dear,’ I said; ‘ I must leave 
you here,’ and taking her hand, I raised it to my 
lips and turned to go. As I parted the branches 
at the edge of the clearing to go back into the 
forest, I looked around, realizing that she had 
spoken no word of good-bye. She stood as I had 
left her, but the tears were running down her face, 
and behind them was a look in her eyes which a 
man sees not often in this life, and then only to 
his good. Without a word I turned, and retrac- 
ing my steps, took her into my arms and covered 
her upturned, beautiful, willing face with kisses. 
All at once I realized that my kisses were being 
returned, and that she was clinging to me with all 
her strength. 

‘‘ How long we stood there thus, I do not know. 
I do not care to know. I only know that heaven 
can hold no joy greater than that I then experi- 
enced. At length I knew that I must go, and with 
a last caress I tenderly, but firmly, released those 
sweet clinging arms, and bid her once more good- 
bye. 

“ ‘ Good-bye, Chum,’ she said. ‘ You will come 
back to me, won’t you ? ’ 

“ ‘ Yes, Dear,’ I said. ‘ I will.’ 

“ This time, not trusting myself to give a back- 
ward glance, I went straight into the forest to 
my pack and away. I never saw her again. 

“ Many times I have wondered what the out- 
come would have been if I had yielded to my de- 


“ WAYSIDE ” 


1^9 


sire and gone to her. She was a millionaire’s 
daughter and I had nothing, having broken away 
from all home ties, resolved and determined to 
make my own way alone and unaided. The next 
night by my lonely camp fire I made my fight and 
came to my conclusion. I would not go to her 
until I could offer her the same comforts and lux- 
uries to which she was accustomed. I would not 
even communicate with her. I would not seek to 
take advantage of a momentary grateful impulse 
of which she did not and could not realize the sig- 
nificance. 

“ Yet I loved her. In that hour and at that 
time, no man ever loved a woman more. She filled 
my mind and thought for days and weeks and 
months. Through all the years of my life her 
memory has helped to keep me clean and honest 
and nearer to God. It will go with me to the end, 
and in heaven will be one of my joys forever. 

“ It was a perfect experience ; there was no 
after circumstances to mar its perfect harmony. 
My memory of her is only as she stood there that 
morning, beautiful, innocent, and trusting. In 
a sacred comer of my heart I hold her thus for- 
ever.” 


CHAPTER X 


There is music and dancing again in the old 
house at “ Wayside,” Little Lady, and the place 
is filled with Kate’s friends and mine. Up in the 
third story the young people are enjoying them- 
selves in their own way, and down in the great 
living room the fathers and mothers are gathered 
for the kind of enjoyment more suited to their 
age and habits of life. The sounds of laughter 
and merry voices of the young float down the wide 
stairway from the rooms above, calling up the 
memories of those past happy days when these 
same fathers and mothers met in this same old 
house years ago, and enjoyed themselves in this 
same way in which their happy children are now 
doing. We have not lacked for music and singing 
also below stairs, but now we are gathered about 
the open fire, and the talk has turned to other 
things. There has been some discussion as to the 
proper training of the young, and Charles is tell- 
ing his opinions. 

“ I believe fully in the living of the simple life,” 
said he, “ and the inestimable value of fresh air 
and rational exercise in God’s great, beautiful 
out-of-doors. If all children could have the ad- 
vantage of the association of green fields and 
130 


“ WAYSIDE ” 


131 


shady woods, and if they were taught by com- 
petent instructors the plain and simple rules of 
right living, there would be, in my opinion, much 
less need of criminal courts and prisons, or of 
medicines and physicians. The first few years of 
life are more important than is usually appre- 
ciated. Some one has said, ‘ Give me the first ten 
years of a child’s life, and I care not who has the 
remainder,’ and to a great degree this is true, 
for the impressions, beliefs and qualities which 
are then built into the mind of the growing child 
cling to it through life, and influence all of its ac- 
tions. That child is fortunate indeed who is 
brought up under the influence of a good home, 
and especially with the care of a good and loving 
mother. No power for good in the world ex- 
cels the blessed influence of a good mother over 
the minds of her children, and no matter how long 
they may live, nor into what far country their 
destiny calls them, the tender power of a mother’s 
love is continually calling them to a right life, 
and into ways which lead to happiness.” 

“ My own case,” said I, “ is an exact illustra- 
tion of that fact. My father was a stern, un- 
yielding church Ch/r*istian, and he would have 
every other person be a Christian, with his ideas, 
and a church member, even if a club had to be used 
to persuade him. He would reach the kingdom 
of heaven by militant processes if no others seemed 
adequate. His word was law, and there was no 
avoiding it. He had outgrown childish points of 


132 


“ WAYSIDE ” 


view, and could not sympathize with youthful 
spirits. He was very strict in his observance of 
the Sabbath, and would tolerate no amusement on 
that day. Upon one occasion I had been in- 
vited by our nearest neighbor’s young people to 
attend a little impromptu picnic in the woods 
near our house on a Sunday afternoon, and had 
accepted the invitation. When my father learned 
of my intention he sternly forbade me to go, and 
read me a severe lecture upon what he termed my 
wickedness. 

“ I had long been restive under what I consid- 
ered an unnecessary restraint, and this decided me 
to leave home. I made my arrangements care- 
fully and quietly, making up a small bundle and 
hiding it under a lilac bush at the corner of the 
house, where I could get it when I slipped out 
after every one was asleep. 

“ After the house was still I arose and dressed, 
and taking my shoes in my hand, crept down the 
stairs, opened and closed the outside door softly, 
and tiptoed around to the lilac bush — to find 
my mother standing there, dressed just as she had 
been in the afternoon. 

“ ‘ Well, my boy,’ she said, ‘ were you really in- 
tending to run away without a good-bye or a kiss 
from Mother You had better think better of 
it and go back to bed, but if you are determined 
to go, let us have a talk together first ? ’ 

“ She picked up the little bundle, and we walked 
together out the front gate, and down the road a 


WAYSIDE ” 


133 


short distance to where a great log was lying by 
the roadside. She sat down upon the log and 
drew me down beside her. How long we talked 
there I do not know, but I can remember her ear- 
nest words of advice, and I can almost feel her 
dear hand upon my shoulder as it was that night. 
When I arose at last to go, she put her arms 
around me and kissed me good-bye, and the last 
words were spoken as she looked into my eyes 
while tears stood in her own. 

“ ‘ I am not afraid that my boy will forget me 
or my teaching, but wherever he may go I will 
trust him to be clean and honest and honorable, 
and to do nothing of which either he or I need to 
be ashamed.’ Then, as she slipped a bill into my 
hand, she held me close for a moment silently, 
and I knew that she was praying for my safety 
and welfare. 

“ I can see her now as she stood there then, 
my beautiful, dainty mother, who was in all of her 
life as near to the angels as it is given for mortals 
to be. Hers was the rule of love, and I cannot 
remember now that she ever talked anything but 
kindness and happiness. I went my way with my 
heart full of love for my mother, but also with my 
mind full of bitterness against the iron rule of 
my father. 

“ Being strong and willing, I soon obtained 
work, and wrote regularly to my mother, and I 
found out afterwards that she had told the whole 
story to my father, who decided that, as I went 


134 


“ WAYSIDE ” 


away of my own free will, I could return in the 
same way. I stayed away for many years, al- 
though after the first year I often went home to 
visit and was received as cordially as though my 
leaving had been in the ordinary natural course 
of events. Years afterward I found that my 
father had secretly kept well informed of my wel- 
fare without my knowledge. 

“ At last I drifted into the West, and at one 
time lived for two years in a rough little western 
city, where I fell in with a number of associates 
who were careless in their habits and conduct. 
These young men drank some, and swore, and 
played cards for money, and did other things which 
they had no right to do. To be sociable, I joined 
them in the card playing, first innocently, then a 
regular poker game for money, and at last found 
myself playing in a game one Sunday afternoon 
in an upper room in a small hotel where we all 
boarded. I had been somewhat fortunate, and 
my winnings were upon the table before me w^hen, 
as I laid down my hand for a moment and leaned 
back against the open window just behind me, a 
woman’s voice came to my ear singing a hymn. 
It was a hymn my mother often sang, and the 
voice sounded like hers. 

“ Instantly the picture of my mother came up 
before me, as she stood there that night of our 
parting, with the moonlight shining upon her ten- 
der face, and her sweet voice was saying, ‘ I will 
trust my boy to be clean and honest and honor- 


“ WAYSIDE ” 


135 


able.’ I closed my eyes, and again the words 
of the hymn came to me faint but clear. ‘ Cover 
my defenseless head with the shadow of thy wing,’ 
sang the voice, and I opened my eyes and looked 
around the room. Pipes, cigars, cards, and beer 
bottles were scattered around, and the room was 
blue with smoke, while the coarse conversation of 
my associates jarred upon my newly awakened 
sense of right. Rising, I said, 

“ ‘ Right here I quit this game now and for- 
ever, and whoever owns this money which I have 
won may have it, for I will have nothing to do 
with it.’ 

“ One of the young men made a sneering re- 
mark, but another took it up for me. 

“ ‘ He is right,’ he said, ‘ and I propose to join 
him. I have had enough of this sort of thing 
myself, and will leave it now for good.^ 

“We left the room together, and once outside 
he asked me how I came to my sudden resolution, 
and I told him. 

“ ‘ I am glad that you did it,’ he said, ‘ for I 
just needed some one to speak up as you did to 
decide me. I knew that we were not doing right, 
but I did not have the courage to break away, 
but now that I have announced myself I will stick 
to it.’ 

“ Many times in my after-life my resolution of 
that Sunday afternoon gave me the strength to 
decide against some action which I knew was not 
right, and often in an hour of temptation has 


136 “ WAYSIDE ’’ 

there come up before me the picture of my mother 
with that look of love upon her face, and her 
voice has mentally reached me across the silence 
of the years, ‘ I will trust my boy to be clean 
and honest and honorable.’ 

“ In all my hours of sorrow and trial, the mem- 
ory of my dear, patient, self-sacrificing mother 
has helped me to be strong, and in my dreams her 
presence has come to me like a benediction out 
of the memories of the past. My life with her and 
with my beautiful, perfect wife has blessed all 
womankind for me, and I owe them a debt of 
gratitude which I never will be able to repay. Up 
in the room which I still occupy, I slept as a 
child, and it is hallowed still by a mother’s in- 
definable presence, although her physical form has 
been long absent. Sometimes I wake in the silent 
night, filled with the sense that my mother has 
been there bending over me as of yore, to see if all 
were well with the child, and that her dear hand 
has just arranged the blankets for my comfort, or 
smoothed my pillow with her loving touch. Here 
where I am sitting to-night, I have often knelt 
by her knee in the old days to repeat my evening 
prayer, or to pour out my childish griefs into her 
sympathizing ear. I sometimes think that this 
dear memory, so clear and strong, can never leave 
me, no matter what life I lead, through all eter- 
nity.” 

“ I often wonder,” said Charles, “ if we do 
not sometimes remember in a faint and uncertain 


“ WAYSIDE ” 


137 


way some incident or circumstance of a former 
existence in some other life. To most people 
there comes at times a dim sense of remembrance 
which tells them that they have had, at some time 
too far off to be located, an experience similar 
to the present one, and could it not be possible 
that a sense of recollection should come from the 
subconscious memory of a long-past physical life? 
Sometimes one sense brings this feeling to us, and 
sometimes another, — something indefinitely fa- 
miliar in the vision of things, or perhaps a sound, 
or a smell, which tells us of something far away 
in the past which we have known or experienced, 
but which we cannot place in this present physical 
life.” 

I know the feeling you mean,” said Robert, 
“ but I believe it comes from and applies to an 
experience in this life which lies in the back- 
ground of our memory, ready to come forward 
when circumstances warrant. The perfume of a 
certain flower always brings to my consciousness 
an incident of my young manhood, the memory of 
which is so dear, and yet so bitter sweet, that I 
hesitate to tell of it, and yet when I go down along 
the shaded paths of memory I always find it there 
among my most cherished possessions. 

“ Trailing arbutus, that lovely fragrant flower 
of early spring, — I never see it, I never catch a 
breath of its perfume, I never think of it, that 
there does not come back to me this memory of 
long ago. I was attending school in a university 


138 


“ WAYSIDE ” 


town, and was boarding in a private family with a 
lawyer and his wife. He was a careless man in 
his domestic relations, seeming to really care little 
for his pretty and dainty young wife, and being 
absorbed in his business, his clubs, his sports, 
and his outside associates, he utterly neglected 
to bestow upon her those attentions and courtesies 
which are evidences of affection, and for which 
every woman’s heart hungers. He appeared to 
care little what she did or how she passed her 
life, so long as she did not interfere with his 
selfish pleasures, or make demand upon his 
time. 

“ She loved books, as I did ; she loved the out- 
of-doors, as I did ; she loved the woods and flowers, 
as I did, and naturally, having tastes in common, 
we were thrown together in a friendly way, but 
never, by so much as a word or look or thought, 
had there been aught between us which the whole 
wide world might not have known up to that day 
which marks for me a color spot in memory. 

“We had been talking one evening about the 
early summer flowers, and I had said that I had 
seen that day some fresh trailing arbutus, and I 
thought I would go out next day to the woods 
and find some. She said, 

“ ‘ I want to go. J ohn, will you go with me 
to-morrow? ’ 

“ ‘ No, I care nothing for it,’ he said. ‘ You 
go with Robert ; he will take you all right.’ 

“ ‘ Certainly,’ I said, ‘ if you are willing.’ 


“ WAYSIDE ” 139 

“ ‘ Willing? ’ he said. ‘ What do you suppose 
I care where you go ? ’ 

“We drove out into the country and to some 
woods I knew of where trailing arbutus grew, 
and soon we had filled our basket with the beauti- 
ful, fragrant flowers. We stood listening to the 
birds singing, and inhaling the sweet, pure air of 
a perfect day, one of those days when heaven 
and earth draw near together. She said, 

“ ‘ Oh, I wish John liked the things I do.’ And 
then, as the tears came into her eyes, all her 
pent-up feelings broke their bounds, and she was 
pouring out her heart’s sadness to my listening 
ears. 

“ ‘ You dear girl,’ I said, ‘ I wish that I had 
known you first,’ and I took her into my arms. 

“ The basket of arbutus fell to the ground, 
and for one brief moment the whole wide earth was 
forgotten. Only a moment, when honor came 
knocking at my soul, persistent, insistent, stri- 
dent, — not to be denied, — and I turned from her, 
picked up the basket without a word, and started 
toward the carriage. 

“We spoke but little on the homeward drive, 
and then only of other things. The next day I 
packed my belongings and left the house, and went 
to live in another part of the city. I did not dare 
to stay, for in that After Time I will have no 
woman’s voice be my accuser. This I have es- 
caped so far, thank God, and no woman can face 
me in the Great Beyond, and say I wronged her. 


140 “ WAYSIDE ” 

“ So when even a faint scent of arbutus comes 
to my senses, there comes back to me the memory 
of that day when impulse and inclination strug- 
gled in the depths of my soul with right and 
honor, and almost gained a victory. But honor 
won, and so there comes only to me with that 
memory the songs of happy birds, the fragrant 
scent of flowers, mingled with a certain keen regret 
that life should have used this woman so, driving 
her, I fully believe, almost against her will to turn 
for sympathy to one who had no right to offer 
it to her. All of these faint remembrances which 
you speak of could be traced, I believe, to some 
half-forgotten incident in this present life, and not 
to any other.” 

“ Well, that may be,” said Charles. “ I do not 
know ; but this I do believe, that when we have left 
this body and gone into the non-physical time, 
be it long or short, it is only by such individual 
experience as this you mention that we will know 
that we are we, and not some other. By some ex- 
perience which is ours alone and different from the 
rest is the only way we will know ourselves out- 
side of the physical, as it is now in the physical. 
We are making that individual experience every 
day of life, and upon our decisions at such times 
as this will depend how much that after-life will 
hold for us of heaven or of hell. 

“ Suppose a man should be taken with a sort 
of paralysis, and his sense of hearing should be 
lost. All he would then know about sound would 


“ WAYSIDE ” 


141 


be his memory of sounds which he had heard in 
the past, and his memory would call them up. 
Suppose he then should lose his sight. He then 
could have no new sight experience, but his mem- 
ory would be busy calling up what he had seen in 
the past. Suppose this paralysis should extend 
to his sense of smell, then to his sense of taste, and 
then at last to his sense of touch. He would have 
lost absolutely the power of physical sensation. 
His entire body would be paralyzed, dead to all 
outside sensation of any kind ; but he would per- 
fectly remember all of these things, hearing, sight, 
smell, taste and touch. Do you not see that he 
would exist only in his memory of his past ex- 
perience 

“ This person would be what we call dead, which 
only means that he has lost the power of physical 
sensation or experience, but is living in his mind, 
his memory, as much as ever. Now, this is what 
death means, or it means nothing but pure extinc- 
tion. If anything survives death, it is this ability 
to remember, to think over the past, and if this 
persists, it is working perfectly. The mind can 
remember all of its past experience, but is incapa- 
ble of having any new or different experience out- 
side of the physical. 

“ That is all there is to it. We just stop hav- 
ing new experience, and remember perfectly the 
past. Isn’t that a simple proposition So we 
can see just what we are doing every hour and 
day and minute, — making experience to remem- 


142 


“ WAYSIDE ” 


ber in that ‘ other world ’ which is not somewhere 
else, but here, as much as the man would be here 
that I have been speaking of. When that time 
comes, if we have pleasant things to remember, 
clean, happy and good things, we will be happy 
in remembrance. As we have sown, so shall we 
surely reap. We do not live each hour just for 
that hour alone, but for the eternity of time in 
which we shall remember it. So we can see how 
we can cast out fear, which is the most disturbing 
element in life. Simply live right and think right, 
and there can be nothing whatsoever to fear. 
What should we fear except the harvest.? Why 
not, then, sow such seed as shall bring us a harvest 
of only happy things, a remembrance of happy 
things ? 

“ There is no mystery about this matter, and 
there is no necessity for mystery. We can make 
our memory what we please, and the power to re- 
member is all there is to it. What others do is 
nothing to us. It is our own mental attitude and 
our own manner of thinking which we must look 
out for, because the only salvation possible un- 
der heaven and among men is a clean and perfect 
memory of happy things. This cannot be given 
us from outside, but we must grow it ourselves, by 
personal effort, on the inside.” 

“ It seems to me,” I said, “ that there is no 
escape from the natural logic of that position, 
and if we wish to base our belief upon our reason 
and the evidences of our senses, and not upon some 


“ WAYSIDE ” 


143 


superstitious tradition of the ages, we will be 
obliged to acknowledge its truth. I have been 
years arriving at my present convictions, 
but through wide reading and much study my 
faith is at last founded upon the rock of common 
sense, from which it would be impossible to remove 
it. I have desired to find only the truth, and in 
this theory I think that I have found it. 

“ I believe that the law of attraction is domi- 
nant in the finer mental world, and that the or- 
ganized mental consciousness, when released from 
the physical body at death, not only holds to- 
gether and persists, but is attracted into sur- 
roundings and environment which are congenial 
to it. Thus it will be attracted to an evil en- 
vironment just in proportion as it has evil in its 
makeup, evil inclinations, evil propensities and evil 
desires, and it will be attracted to a good environ- 
ment just in proportion to the good which it has 
developed in itself. I believe this because I be- 
lieve that no outside power sends it anywhere by 
arbitrary fiat or force, but that every conscious- 
ness is left free, under the law, to follow its own 
inclinations in the same way that it has done in the 
physical life. Thus every consciousness makes its 
own judgment under the undeviating law of God. 
It invariably reaps as it has sown, and absolute 
justice is meted out to every soul alike. If it 
has evil inclinations and desires, it goes into evil 
surroundings, and gains a birth into another body 
in those surroundings. If it has good inclina- 


144 


“ WAYSIDE ” 


tions and desires, it goes into good environment, 
and gains a birth in that environment. In no 
other way can I make justice in the fact of the 
difference in birth conditions, and under no other 
theory can I solve the problem to my own satis- 
faction of the savage and of the child which meets 
an early death. 

“ If the soul of the savage is sent to hell be- 
cause of its ignorance and unbelief, then what 
becomes of the love and the justice of God.? And 
if the soul of the savage is suddenly saved be- 
cause of its ignorance, then why carry any gos- 
pel message to it, and thus imperil it through 
knowledge.? But if the soul of the savage is only 
our younger brother, and has the same chance to 
grow and develop in life after life that every soul 
has, then that theory makes, to my mind, reason 
and justice and harmony with the great law of 
life. 

“ If the soul of the child which dies after a few 
days or weeks or months of this physical life 
goes straight to heaven and happiness, and the ex- 
perience of a physical life is not necessary to it, 
then why not allow all the children to die in in- 
fancy, and thus surely save their souls.? And 
why should I be given nearly a hundred years of 
physical life, with its temptations, its dangers and 
its uncertainties, if the physical life has no object, 
or is of no use to me.? Either the child is de- 
prived of a necessary condition for its growth and 
development, or I am made to take an unneces- 


“ WAYSIDE ” 


145 


sary risk, a risk which carries the vast majority 
of souls to an endless hell. I utterly fail to be 
able to make that theory give God the justice 
which he must have to command my love and re- 
spect. 

“ But if the child soul is not cheated out of its 
chance for the necessary physical life experience, 
but is given all the physical lives necessary, — 
some short, some long, it may be, — it matters not, 
for it has the same opportunity for growth and 
development that every soul has, and reaches 
heaven at last in exactly the same way that every 
other soul does. 

“ It makes very little difference to me whether 
this theory is accepted or believed by any other 
person or not. It makes justice and sense and 
harmony to my mind as no other theory does. 
Either God has control over birth and death, or 
unchangeable law is in control. If these things 
are controlled by the arbitrary fiat of God, then 
he is not a just God, and does not give every soul 
an even chance; but if the unchangeable law of 
God is in control, and the soul goes where at- 
traction calls it, then even level justice rules at 
the world’s heart, and every soul receives exactly 
its own, reaping as it has sown. There is no cir- 
cumstance or condition of life which this theory 
does not fit and make reasonable, and I know of 
no fact in life which contradicts it. If it is not 
so, then everything happens just as though it was 
so, and as a consequence I am willing to accept it. 


146 “ WAYSIDE ” 

“ The theory that we are to be handed at some 
time in the future, probably just after death, a 
different sort of life from what we know now, 
more happiness or more misery, and experience a 
different way of living it, I do not believe, and I 
can see no reason why any one else should believe 
it. Right here and now is the time given us to 
live, and if we do not get the good out of it, and 
appreciate it, the fault is entirely with ourselves. 
We will never have a better chance to live than we 
have right here to-day. 

“ And so I believe in the fact of physical evo- 
lution, — that the physical form of man has 
evolved through countless time from the primary 
single cell, — and beyond that we do not need to 
go. I believe it because the theory makes sense 
and is reasonable, and all known facts point to it 
as true. I believe it because I can understand it 
and see how it can be so. 

‘‘ I believe that matter or substance itself is in- 
destructible and immortal; that forms and com- 
binations change, but the amount of substance is 
always and forever the same. I believe that mat- 
ter or substance is controlled in its combinations 
and in all ways by its mentality, its mind side, 
which is its finer manifestation, and that every 
visible physical form is composed of dense mental 
substance which is visible and fine mental substance 
which is invisible, the finer combining, building and 
controlling the denser, and thereby organizing a 
controlling combination of fine mental substance 


“ WAYSIDE ” 


147 


which develops a nervous system and a central 
dominating combination, acquiring at last the 
power of individual thought and ability to persist. 
I believe that memory is the binding force which 
holds this finer organization together, a memory 
of mutual congenial experience in the physical 
life, and that the attraction of kindred atoms 
holds together this central entity until it finally 
achieves the power of thinking for itself and a 
coherence sufficient to defy the disintegration of 
the dense physical body. I believe this because it 
makes sense and is reasonable, and all known facts 
point to its truth. I believe it because I can un- 
derstand it and see how it can be so. 

“ I believe that physical evolution is not yet 
complete, but the physical and mental evolution 
will continue on together, as the finer and the 
denser manifestations of the same thing, until 
man’s physical body will be in such harmonious 
relation to its environment, and the persisting 
mentality, the ego, controlling the body will have 
acquired such a knowledge of the laws of environ- 
ment, and developed such wisdom and such desire 
of right living that the continuance of the phys- 
ical form will be indefinitely prolonged, — the ego 
ever gaining strength and wisdom, the denser form 
ever getting more harmonious with its environ- 
ment. I believe this because underlying the uni- 
verse is the fact of growth and development which 
can only result in better conditions and longer, 
fuller and more perfect life. 


148 “ WAYSIDE ” 

“ I believe that as man grows more in accord 
with the higher laws of being, as he gets farther 
and farther away from his animal inheritance, his 
physical body will grow finer and finer and less 
gross, and he will develop powers in the physical 
which would be regarded as miraculous to-day. 
We get occasional glimpses of these latent powers 
in mental healing, in mind reading, and in spiritual 
control of the physical. I believe the time will 
come when telepathy will be the universal and com- 
monly demonstrated fact, when mind will com- 
municate with mind without the aid of audible 
speech in all the daily intercourse of life. I be- 
lieve that telepathy has even now been proven to 
be a fact, and when individual mentalities develop 
sufficiently in strength, men will be able to read 
each other’s thought like the printed page. 

“ The vital principle of the persisting mentality 
is its harmony with the creative Power of the uni- 
verse. It must be developed in harmony with the 
divine Creator or it will disintegrate and disap- 
pear. The creative Power of the universe is lov- 
ing, beneficent and kind, and the persisting entity 
must be in accord, or it never will reach immor- 
tality. 

“ One of the most inharmonious notes in the in- 
dividual mentality is the presence of fear, — fear 
of punishment, fear of consequences from the law, 
fear of revenge from an angry and wrathful God, 
fear of the great judgment, and fear of the eter- 
nal hereafter. Yet fear has never saved a soul. 


“ WAYSIDE ” 


149 


and never will. No ego reaches heaven through 
fear of any other place. No saved soul knows 
fear of anything. Salvation is the casting out of 
fear and the entering in of love. The way of sal- 
vation is the way of harmony with the great Love 
which rules at the world’s heart. 

“ When we live right from choice, and do right 
from desire, we are on the way to salvation, and 
no other pathway leads to immortality and eter- 
nal happiness. The notion of an angry God is 
one of the hideous superstitions of the ages, which 
has been handed down from that darkened men- 
tal time in which were born the creeds of fear and 
wrath and revenge which have terrorized the souls 
of men through all the years. God is Love and 
Light and Happiness, and neither fear nor anger 
nor sorrow nor care can come into his existence. 
The saved soul will be filled with the sunlight of 
love and peace and happiness, and no goblin shape, 
whether called God or fiend or devil, which knows 
or holds fear or wrath or revenge, can come into 
the kingdom where the loving God reigns supreme.” 

Just at that moment the old clock on the stairs 
rang out the hour of midnight, and obedient to 
its summons the music ceased upstairs, and soon 
the dancing feet came gaily down, their owners 
flushed and happy with the exercise and the pleas- 
ure of the dance. 

“ Mercy ! ” said Kate. “ Look at this company 
of sober faces. One would think that you had 
been holding some sort of a religious service down 


150 “ WAYSIDE ” 

here to counteract the gaiety upstairs. Now, 
Uncle Jack, honestly, do you not believe that our 
meeting upstairs was really just as religious as 
your gathering down here, even if we did make a 
little more noise about it? ” 

“ Yes, my dear,” I said, “ I really do believe 
that your occupation was just as profitable to 
you as ours was to us, for I honestly believe that 
the only way in which we can draw close to the 
divine Happiness which rules the world is through 
our own happiness and joy, and that person comes 
nearest living the life the Creator intended who 
finds the most innocent pleasure and happiness in 
life. If happiness is to be the condition in the 
After-Time, we might well make every effort to 
find it here and now, but we must also realize that 
there are serious things in life, as well as dancing 
and music and laughter, and while it is not nec- 
essary to be too solemn about it, yet we must con- 
sider the sober side of life also. There should be 
times for music and dancing and gaiety, but there 
should also be times for looking at life seriously, 
and earnestly trying to learn the lessons which 
the ages have to teach.” 

Soon our guests had all departed, and once 
more Kate and I sat down together before the fire 
for our customary good-night talk together. 

‘‘ My dear,” I said, “ I am face to face with one 
of those situations in life where I wish to console 
a friend in trouble, and I hardly know how to go 
about it. 


“ WAYSIDE ” 


151 


“ I have just received a letter from a young 
married woman friend of mine, telling me of the 
death of her little five-year-old daughter. I am 
hesitating about answering it, for what words can 
avail a mother who has lost her child? I knew 
her before she was married, a bright, happy, joy- 
ous, beautiful girl, full of the sunshine of youth 
and health and the happiness of dreams for the 
future. I saw her happily married to a good man, 
and as far as I know, all of her bright dreams 
were being realized. I saw her pass close to the 
valley of the shadow when her baby girl was born, 
but fearlessly, confidently going down into the 
dimness of uncertainty for the sake of that dear 
soul which the laws of creation had entrusted to 
her. I saw her will to live drawing her back into 
health and strength after the ordeal had passed, 
that brave young mother who trusted in the good 
law that she and the babe would not be parted 
then, but live together. 

“ I saw her often during the first years of the 
child’s life, tenderly, carefully, thankfully doing 
her best, as she saw the light, to shield the child 
from harm or misfortune, and I saw her joy and 
delight in watching its growth and development 
and its constantly opening mentality. I know her 
happiness in possession, and have heard her plan 
for its future, their future, she and the child to- 
gether. 

“ And now there has stepped into her paradise 
this angel whom we do not care to see, and the 


152 


“ WAYSIDE ” 


sunshine of her life has disappeared. Now, what 
can I say to this weeping mother, out of the depths 
of my confident philosophy of life, which will give 
her consolation in this hour of sorrow.^ 

‘‘ She grieves for the loss of the dear physical 
baby form, which she longs to hold again in her 
loving arms, and she wants to hear again its sweet 
voice calling her by name. Nothing can quite fill 
this void. Nothing can take the place of this 
physical contact and companionship which can 
exist henceforth only in her memory. Her grief 
is a physical cry for a physical experience, and 
even the dearest and sweetest memory can never 
take its place. 

“ Shall I tell her that it is my firm and confi- 
dent belief that this dear soul whom she has so 
loved was attracted to her in the first place be- 
cause of congenial things ; that the soul which 
inhabited that baby body was drawn to her be- 
cause of love for her before that body ever saw 
the light of day; that a mutual love between her 
own pure soul and that of the child unborn 
brought the congenial soul to her in the begin- 
ning, and that same love will perchance bring it 
back again to her, because of this added, loving, 
physical life experience together 

“ Shall I tell her that I believe that the short 
experience of physical life which her child has just 
had will not keep it long out of the physical, and 
if another child of love is born to her, this same 
soul may be the one to inhabit the new body.^’ 


“ WAYSIDE ” 


15S 


“ Suppose that she believed that this was the 
law of creative life, would she not find consolation 
in the thought that she would again in reality 
hold this same dear soul in her loving physical 
embrace, that this soul whose physical life experi- 
ence had been cut short in consequence of some 
broken physical law, — which was unavoidable, 
perhaps, under the circumstances because of ig- 
norance of the law’s operation, — will stay close 
to her, and if opportunity offers, will come back 
into the physical life with her again? How 
doubly and dearly would she love and guard this 
other physical form, with that belief in her heart 
and that thought in her mind. How often would 
she see traces and glimpses of the dear child which 
has left her now in the one which comes back by 
the loving processes of the Creator’s beneficent 
plan. 

“ Shall I tell her that the baby form has not 
been taken from her because of any special dis- 
pensation of Providence, or interference by the 
Creator, for the Lord giveth, and the Lord tak- 
eth away, only through his constant laws, which 
ever were and ever will be the same in their opera- 
tion ? 

“ Shall I tell her that this dear baby is not far 
from her now, and is full of the sweet memory of 
its life with her? I often wonder if a baby does 
not remember, before it begins to realize its new 
physical life, something of its past experience 
and the existence from which it came, or is just 


154 “ WAYSIDE ” 

coming. As I look into a baby’s questioning eyes, 
there seems to me to lie in their depths the wisdom 
of the ages, as though that soul, if it could man- 
age the new physical vehicle to its will, could and 
would tell us the secrets which all humanity so 
longs to know. But the new brain is only devel- 
oped into functioning power by its own physical 
experience, so it cannot respond to the life experi- 
ence of some other brain now disintegrated and 
dissolved. It is well that this is so, for a soul 
would only be hampered by physical ability to re- 
member a former life experience. To act quickly 
it must have results, the condensation or product, 
of former experience. So that the wise scheme 
calls a halt after enough life experience at any 
one time, and then takes time to work that ex- 
perience up into faculties and qualities or results 
for its use in another life. 

“ Then, can I not say to this sorrowing mother 
that she should not grieve as those without hope, 
for nothing good which has come into her life will 
ever again be entirely lost to her, and the dear 
soul which came into her care through the great 
law of attraction by that same law will never get 
beyond her possible reach ” 


CHAPTER XI 


The month of December is here again, Evelyn, 
and this is my last talk with you, for I have said, 
I think, what I wanted to say in the beginning, 
and if you have followed me through all these 
pages, as I love to think you have, you will be able 
to see the mental attitude of a mind which is try- 
ing to stand alone upon its own foundation. 

It lacks but a few days of Christmas, and I 
have a letter from Philip saying that he will be 
here on Christmas Day. He has done well in the 
past year, and is gaining recognition as a com- 
poser, and musicians predict a bright future for 
him. Kate does not mention him often, but I 
know that he is constantly in her thoughts, and 
when she told me recently that Harry had pro- 
posed to her, but that she could not accept him, 
I knew well where her heart was centered. He has 
accepted a position in the city here, and asks me 
if he may occupy the little house again as he did 
before. There is no reason why Kate should not 
marry him if she loves him, for this is her home, 
and I have enough to make her comfortable. If 
Philip marries her, I can persuade them to stay 
here, while some other man might take her away, 
so you can see that I am not altogether unselfish 
155 


156 ‘‘ WAYSIDE ” 

in my desires. She has so grown into my heart 
and fits so perfectly into my life and home that it 
would be very hard for me to get along without 
her, and I hope that she will stay here while I live. 

I am sitting in front of the fire in my easy chair, 
and Kate is at the piano, playing and singing 
softly, as she loves to do, and as I let my thoughts 
wander back over the years that I have passed 
here in this dear old house, so full of pleasant 
memories, I feel that God has been very good to 
me, and that his loving scheme of life is a very 
perfect one. The sorrows and trials of the past 
are few and faint and far between to-night, while 
the pleasures and blessings and joys are many and 
clear and bright in my memory. There were some 
hardships and troubles in my boyhood days, I 
suppose, and some unpleasant things, and it is 
likely that unusual pleasures were comparatively 
uncommon, but as I remember it now, that life was 
a very happy one. I have forgotten most of the 
sorrows and difficulties, or if I remember them at 
all, time has drawn such a veil over them that 
they appear very insignificant and trivial and in- 
distinct, but the joy of life, of health and strength 
and the happy things are as clear to me as yes- 
terday. 

I remember my mother’s sweet face, and her 
tender, loving regard for me. I remember the 
wonderful things which under her skillful fingers 
the great oven in the kitchen produced, and which 
I received with a hungry boy’s keen delight. I 


“ WAYSIDE ” 


157 


remember her sympathy in all my boyhood woes, 
which she never laughed at for the trifles which 
they were. I remember the old well with its wind- 
lass and bucket, and the clear, cold water which 
we used to draw from the northeast corner,” and 
which afforded a thirst-quenching drink not to be 
excelled by any nectar quaffed by gods or men. 
I remember the cool, shady depths of the woods, 
and the flowers which grew in the sunny places. 
I remember the singing of the birds, the robins, 
the orioles and the thrushes, and the meadow- 
lark’s soft call in the evening. I remember the 
fields of waving grain, across which the sunlight 
played and danced. 

I remember lying flat upon my back in the fra- 
grant clover fields, with my old straw hat over my 
face, and peeping through the rents where the 
straw had parted at the fleecy clouds, white and 
purple and gray, which chased each other through 
a heaven of azure blue. I rejnember the pure sum- 
mer air filled with the perfume of innumerable 
flowers and a multitude of sweet scented blossoms. 
I remember the little lake and the swimming place, 
shaded and secure from prying eyes. I remember 
the sleepy drone of the numberless bees and the 
cheerful chirp of the cricket on the hearthstone in 
the evening. I remember the meals my mother 
used to serve, which far surpassed in deliciousness 
any which the finest hotel in the land can boast of 
to-day. 

I remember the winter joys of skating and 


158 


“ WAYSIDE ” 


coasting and the sleigh rides in the big “ bobs ” 
with the long sleigh box packed with straw, in 
which nestled the happy boys and girls, well cov- 
ered up with buffalo robes, for there were real 
buffalo robes in those days. I remember the par- 
ties at the different homes, at which we played 
games in happy joyousness, and ate suppers which 
kings might envy. 

I remember the pleasures of my later life, the 
dear, beautiful, loving wife, and the joyous child, 
who filled the old home with sunshine. I remem- 
ber the music and song and happiness of those 
perfect days which could not be improved upon in 
paradise. I remember with joy that she was 
happy then, and there lingers in my mind no trou- 
ble which ever came between us. And now her 
counterpart sits at the piano and sings the dear, 
old, familiar love songs in her voice, until my 
heart is filled with the melody of a world made 
beautiful. The pleasant things are all fresh and 
clear in my memory, but the troubles or sorrows, 
where are they, for if they existed then, I do not 
remember them now. 

And so the beautiful and beneficent scheme of 
life works out always and forever, and the trials 
which are past fade out of remembrance, while the 
joy abideth forever. And in the loving scheme 
also is strength given us according to our needs, 
and if we obey the laws, nothing will ever come 
to us which we have not the strength given us to 
bear. The very worst of our troubles is the an- 


“ WAYSIDE ” 


159 


ticipation of them, which is the breaking of the 
law of trust which we should have in our Creator. 
God’s care, through his laws, reaches everywhere 
and covers everything which he has created, and 
the everlasting arms are around every creature in 
his universe. 

So I believe that we cannot get away from God, 
for no bottomless hell was ever conceived by the 
mind of man so deep that God’s love could not 
reach down and lift out the repentant sinner who 
is struggling to throw off his burden of sin and 
come back into obedience. God’s mercy has no 
end, and the spirit of God strives with man as 
long as there is any good left in his soul to an- 
swer. 

And now. Little Lady of my dreams, my story 
is told, and I must bid you farewell, but before 
I do so, let me whisper in your pretty ear, in 
strictest confidence, a secret which you must not 
tell except to Scott, for I would have you keep no 
secrets from him. The story I have told you is 
real truth, my dear, and if you knew the way to 
find us, you would find that Kate and I and the 
old house and the rest are all real, and this tale 
I have related is the real story of our lives, just 
as I have told it to you. Only the names are 
changed, but if I knew your present address, Eve- 
lyn, I would extend to you and your brave boy- 
husband a cordial invitation to come and make us 
a visit, and see that it is all true, for maybe you 
are real also yourself, my dear. Who knows? 


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